







y« -^ 







:^' 



.0" c 

'^^ •^ O M '' -O,^ O <!- 



o 



A 






"^/"^^ 







> 






r\ ' o M o 

















^ 




,^ 



<Jy 



^ 



<" 










(^ 

















'> 








OLD SHRINES AND IVY 



OLD SHRINES 
AND IVY 



BY 
WILLIAM WINTER 



" I do love these a7icient ruins: 
We never tread upon them but we set 
Our foot upon some reverend history. 
. . . But all thmgs have their end" 

The Duchess of Malfi 



NEW YORK • 

MACMILLAN AND COMPANY / / t ^'^^ 

AND London >- < 

1892 






/ 



Copyright, 1892, 
By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



THE 

^OF CONGRESS 

iVASHINGTON 



ss* 



T.vpography by J. S. Gushing & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 
Presswork by Berwick & Smith, Boston, U.S.A. 



TO 

(3toxQt William Curtis 

WITH HONOUR FOR A NOBLE MIND 

AND A BEAUTIFUL LIFE 

AND WITH AFFECTIONATE MEMORIES 

OF MUCH KINDNESS 

DURING MORE THAN THIRTY YEARS OF 

UNCLOUDED FRIENDSHIP 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



" Ibimus, ibimus, 
Utcwnque x>rsecedes, siqyreynuni 
Carjjere iter comites xiarati " 



PEEFACE. 



The shrines upon vjJiich these offerings 
of homage are laid are shrines of history 
and shrines of literature. It has been the 
author's design, alike in description anC 
commentary, and whether depicting scenes of 
travel or celebrating achievements of genius., 
to carry through his books the thread of 
Shakespearean interest. The study of 
Shakespeare is the study of life. There can 
be no broader or higher subject. In these 
sketches and essays, accordingly, the reader 
is desired not only to ramble in various 
parts of England, Scotland, and France, 
but especially to linger for a lohile in lovely 
Warwickshire, and to meditate upon some 
of the ivorks of that diviiie poet with whose 
story and whose spirit that region is hal- 

7 



8 PREFACE. 

lowed. Historical facts that are recounted., 
in the course of these papers., respecting 
Shakespeare p)ieces a^id a few others., are 
not new to the dramatic scholar ; hut even 
to him a summary of knowledge., combined 
with definite thought., as to those loritings, 
may prove not unwelcome. 

Most of the essays 07i the plays were writ- 
ten at the suggestion of my old friend 
Augustin Daly., and were privately printed, 
by way of introduction to stage-versions of 
those plays., edited by him. A thread of 
theatrical history therefore appears in those 
essays, entwined with disquisition on the 
beauties of some of the most cherished treas- 
ures of our language. The paper commem- 
orative of Longfellow was written in the 
New York Tr'ibune at the time of his death. 

W. W. 

May, 1892. 



CONTENTS. 



I. Shrines of History. 



CHAP. 




PAGE 


I. 


STORIED SOUTHAMPTON . 


. 13 


II. 


PAGEANTRY AND RELICS 


. 25 


III. 


THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH 


. 31 


IV. 


A STRATFORD CHRONICLE 


. 40 


V. 


PROM LONDON TO DOVER 


. 55 


VI. 


BEAUTIES OF FRANCE . 


. 66 


VII. 


ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL 


. 75 



VIII. FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS, 86 

IX. THE FIELD OF CULLODEN . . 98 

X. STORM-BOUND IN lONA . . . 107 

9 



10 CONTENTS. 

II. Shrines of Literature. 

CHAP. PAGE 

XI. THE FOREST OF ARBEN : AS YOU 

LIKE IT 133 

XII. FAIRY LAND : A MIDSUMMER 

night's DREAM . . . 163 

XIII. WILL O' THE wisp: LOVE'S LA- 

BOUR'S LOST .... 187 

XIV. SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW . . 207 

XV. A MAD world: ANTONY AND 

CLEOPATRA .... 219 

XVI. SHERIDAN AND THE SCHOOL FOR 

SCANDAL 224 

XVII. FARQUHAR AND THE INCON- 
STANT 249 

XVIII. LONGFELLOW . . . . ** . 261 

XIX. A THOUGHT ON COOPER'S NOV- 
ELS . . . . . .281 

XX. A MAN OF letters: JOHN R. G. 

HAS SARD 285 



SHRINES OF HISTORY 



OLD SHEINES AND IVY. 



I. 

STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 

EARLY in the morning of a brilliant July 
day the Scilly islands came into view, 
a little to the south of our course, and we 
could see the great waves breaking into 
flying masses and long wreaths of silver 
foam, on their grim shores and in their 
rock-bounjd chasms. Yet a little while and 
the steep cliffs of Cornwall glimmered into 
the prospect, and then came the double 
towers of the Lizard Light, and we knew 
that our voyage was accomplished. The 
rest of the way is the familiar panorama 
of the channel coast — lonely Eddystone, 
keeping its sentinel watch in solitude and 
danger ; the green pasture lands of Devon ; 
the crags of Portland, gray and emerald 
and gold, shining, changing, and fading in 
silver mist ; the shelving fringes of the 
Solent ; the sandy coves and green hills of 

13 



14 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 

the beautiful Isle of Wight ; and placid 
Southampton Water with its little light- 
houses and its crescent town, vital with the 
incessant enterprise of the present and rich 
with splendid associations of the past. The 
gloaming had begun to die into night when 
we landed, and in the sleepy stillness of the 
vacant streets and of the quiet inn we were 
soon conscious of that feeling of peace and 
comfort which is the first sensation of the 
old traveller who comes again into England. 
It is the sensation — after long wandering 
and much vicissitude — of being at home 
and at rest ; and you seldom, or never, find 
it elsewhere. 

If the old city of Southampton were not, to 
the majority of ramblers, merely a port of 
entry and departure, if the traveller were 
constrained to seek it as a goal instead of 
treating it as a thoroughfare, its uncommon 
physical beauty and its exceiotional anti- 
quarian interest would be more fitly appre- 
ciated and more highly prized than they 
appear to be at present. Objects that are 
viewed as incidental are seldom compre- 
hended as important. Traffic, with its 
attendant bustle, imparts to Southampton 
shores an air of turbulence and common- 
ness. The popular spirit of our age, not- 



STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 1 5 

withstanding there is a newly awakened 
feeling of reverence actively at work, makes 
no account of picturesque accessories and 
does nothing either to create or to perpetu- 
ate them. In Southampton, for example, 
just as in ancient Warwick, a tramcar 
jangles through the grim arch of a gray 
stone gate of the Middle Ages ; and this 
way the Present makes its comment on the 
Past. Yet the Present and the Past are 
inseparably associated, — the one being the 
consequence and inheritor of the other, — 
and in no way better can the student of 
social development pursue his study than 
in rambling through the streets and among 
the structures that to-day has built amid 
the ruins and the relics of yesterday. A 
walk in breezy Southampton was full of in- 
struction. There was a great and merry 
multitude upon the lovely green Common, 
when first I saw it, a band was playing in 
its pavilion, and birds were circling and 
twittering around the tree-tops in the light 
of the evening sun ; but as I stood there and 
watched the happy throng and listened to 
the martial music the scene seemed sud- 
denly to change, and I beheld the armoured 
cohorts of Henry V., and heard the trum- 
pets bray, and saw the gallant king, upon 



l6 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 

his mail-clad charger, riding downward to 
the sea, for Agincourt and the laurel of 
everlasting fame. 

Many days might be pleasantly spent in 
Southampton and its storied neighbourhood. 
You are at the mouth of the Itchen — the 
river of Izaak Walton, who lived and died 
at venerable Winchester, only a few miles 
away. Netley Abbey is close by. On every 
side, indeed, there is something to stimu- 
late the fancy and to awaken remembrance 
of historic lore. King John's house is 
extant, in Blue Anchor lane. King John's 
charter may be seen in the Audit House. 
The Bridewell Gate still stands, that was 
built by Henry VIII., and in Bugle street 
is the Spanish prison that was used in the 
time of Queen Anne. At the foot of the 
High street stood King Canute's palace ; 
and upon the neighbouring beach the mon- 
arch spoke his vain command to stay the 
advancing waves and made his memorable 
submission to the Power that is greater 
than kings. In St. Michael's square they 
show you an ancient red-tiled house, made 
of timber and brick, in which Anne Boleyn 
once lived, with her royal lord Henry VIII. , 
and which bears her name to this day. It 
is a two-story building, surmounted with 



STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. I'/ 

four large gables, the front curiously diver- 
sified with a crescent pent and with four 
great diamond-latticed casements ; and gaz- 
ing upon it I could not fail to conjure up a 
vision of that dark-eyed, golden-haired 
beauty whose fascination played so large a 
part in shaping the religious and political 
destiny of England. There she may have 
stood, in the gloaming, and looked forth 
upon the grim and gloomy Norman church 
that still frowns upon the lonely square and 
would make a darkness even at noon. A 
few steps from St. Michael's will bring you 
to a relic of a different kind, fraught with 
widely different associations — the birth- 
place of the pious poet Isaac Watts. The 
house stands in French street, a little back 
from the sidewalk, on the east side, and is 
a two-story red-brick dwelling, having eight 
windows in the front of it and two doors. 
Between the house and the street there is 
a garden which was brilliant with the blaz- 
ing yellow of a mass of blooming marigolds. 
A tall iron fence encloses the garden, within 
which are six poplar trees growing along 
the margin, and if you stand at the gate 
and look along French street you can dis- 
cern Southampton "Water, at no great dis- 
tance. They venerate the memory of Dr. 

B 



16 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 

Watts in tliis town, and they have not only 
built a church in his honour, just above 
Bar Gate, but have set up his statue (by 
Mr. Lucas) in the park, — the figure of the 
apostolic bard as he appeared when in the 
act to preach. That piece of sculpture — 
the i^edestal of which is faced with medal- 
lions illustrative of the life and labours of 
the bard — was appropriately dedicated by 
the Earl of Shaftesbury, in July 1861. 
Leaving the birthplace of Watts you have 
only to turn a neighbouring corner and pro- 
ceed a short distance to find an effect of 
contrast still more remarkable — the rem- 
nant of the Domus Dei, in Winkle street, 
the burial-place of the decapitated nobles, 
Scrope, Gray, and Cambridge, who lost their 
lives for conspiracy to assassinate King 
Henry V. This was an almshouse in 
Henry's day and later [it was founded in 
the reign of Richard I.], but only the 
chapel of it remains, and that has been 
restored — a small, dark, oblong structure, 
partly Norman and partly Early English. 
Queen Elizabeth assigned that church for 
the use of Protestant refugees who fled 
from the persecution of the tyrant Alva — 
so active in the Low Countries from 1567 
to 1573. Service is still performed in it, 



STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. I9 

in the French language. Under the chancel 
floor of that old edifice rest the ashes of the 
false friends [dismissed to their death 
nearly five centuries ago] who would have 
slain their king and imperilled their coun- 
try ; and upon the south wall, near the 
altar, there is a tablet of gray stone, with 
indented, blackened letters, bearing this 
record of their fate : 

RICHARD, EARL OF CAMBRIDGE, 

LORD SCROPE OP MASHAM, 

SIR THO. GRAY OF NORTHUMBERLAND, 

CONSPIRED TO MURDER KING 

HENRY V. IN THIS TOWN AS HE 

WAS PREPARING TO SAIL WITH HIS 

ARMY AGAINST CHARLES THE SIXTH, 

KING OF FRANCE, FOR WHICH 

CONSPIRACY THEY WERE EXECUTED 

AND BURIED NEAR THIS PLACE 

IN THE YEAR 

MCCOCXV. 

As you stand by that sepulchre you will 
remember with a new interest and emotion 
the noble, pathetic speech — as high a 
strain of pure eloquence and lofty passion 
as there is in our language — with which 
Shakespeare makes the heroic prince de- 
plore and rebuke, at the same instant, the 



20 STOKIED SOUTHAMPTON. 

treachery of the friendship in which he had 
entirely believed and trusted. Those lords 
were beheaded just outside of Bar Gate. 
Near their tomb, leaning against the wall, 
is a beautiful old brass, — the full-length 
figure of a French cleric of the tnne of 
Queen Elizabeth, — mounted upon an oak 
board ; the head being carved in marble, 
while the person is of the dark green hue 
that old brasses so often acquire, and that 
seems to enhance at once their interest and 
their opulent effect. 

In Southampton, as indeed all over Eng- 
land, the disposition to preserve the relics 
of a romantic past is stronger at present than 
it was a hundred years ago ; and for this 
the antiquary has reason to be deeply grate- 
ful. His constant regret, indeed, is that 
this gentle impulse did not awaken eariier. 
The old Castle of Southampton [where King 
Stephen reigned, who ' ' was a worthy peer ' ' ] 
was long ago destroyed ; but fragments of 
the walls remain, and these, it is pleasant 
to observe, are guarded with scrupulous 
care. As you stroll along the shore your 
gaze will wander from the gay and busy 
steamboats, — alert for the channel islands 
and for France, and seeming like brilliant 
birds that plume their wings for flight, — 



STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 21 

and will rest on grim towers and bastions 
of the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries, 
over which the ivy hangs in dense draperies 
of shining emerald, and against which the 
copious flowers of geranium and nasturtium 
blaze in scarlet and gold. One of those cit- 
adels, peacefully occupied now by the Har- 
bour Board, bears record of a time, in 1482, 
when gunpowder was used there, to repel 
a night attack made by the French ; so that 
the American pilgrim, upon this spot, is 
usefully reminded that there were lively 
times in the world even before Columbus 
made his interesting discovery. A strag- 
gling procession of belated travellers, bear- 
ing bags, rushed wildly by, as I stood before 
that gray remnant of feudal magnificence, 
and an idle youth in the gateway, happily 
furnished with a flageolet, gayly performed 
upon it "The girl I left behind me." 
Nothing can exceed, in mingled strange- 
ness and drollery, the use of these quaint 
places for the business and the pleasure of 
the passing hour. Roaming through the 
narrow little squalid thoroughfare of Blue 
Anchor lane, amid the picturesque foun- 
dations of what was once the royal palace 
of John and of Henry III., — now a mass of 
masonry that has outlasted the storms and 



22 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 

ravages of a thousand years, — I looked 
into dingy lodging-liouses tliat are scarcely 
more than holes in a wall, and threaded a 
difficult way among groups of ragged chil- 
dren, silenced for a moment by the presence 
of a stranger, but soon loud again in their 
careless frolic over the crumbling grandeur 
of forgotten kings. Blue Anchor lane 
leads to the Arcade in the west wall of the 
city, which, with its nineteen splendid 
arches, is surely as fine a specimen of true 
Norman architecture as could be found in 
this kingdom. Bar Gate, at the top of the 
High street, is also a noble relic of Norman 
taste and skill ; but Bar Gate has been 
somewhat modernised by changes and res- 
toration ; and the statue, upon its south 
front, of George III. in the dress of a 
Roman Emperor, mars its venerable antiq- 
uity with a touch of unconsciously comic 
humour. 

Many excursions are practicable from 
Southampton, One of the prettiest of them 
is the drive westward, by the Commercial 
road and Romsey lane, to the village of 
Millbrook, where there is an old church, and 
where — in the adjacent cemetery — an obe- 
lisk of granite marks the resting-place of 
the poet Robert Pollock, author of The 



STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 23 

Course of Time — a poem much read and 
admired by pious people sixty years ago. 
Another, whicli may better be made on foot, 
is tlie ramble along the avenue to South- 
ampton Common, and so, beneath oaks, 
elms, and lime-trees, and through "a sweet 
disorder" of shrubbery and gorse, to the 
beautiful cemetery in which hawthorns, 
evergreens, and a profusion of all the flowers 
that grow in this radiant land have made a 
veritable bower for the awful silence and in- 
scrutable majesty of death. I wandered 
there to look upon the burial-place of my 
old friend Edward Sothern, and I came upon 
it, in an afternoon that was all sunshine 
and fragrance, — like those days of careless 
mirth that once we knew together. There 
never was a droller or more whimsical spirit. 
There never was a comedian who to the 
faculty of eccentric humour added a more 
subtle power of intellectual perception and 
artistic purpose. Few players of our time 
have made so much laughter or given so 
much innocent pleasure. But he could not 
bear prosperity, and he lived too much for 
enjoyment — and so, prematurely, his bright 
career ended. A simple cross of white 
marble marks the place of his last sleep and 
the leaves of a sturdy oak rustle over his 



24 STORIED SOUTHAMPTON. 

head ; and as I turned away from that place 
of peace I saw the shimmering roses all 
around, and heard the cawing of the rooks 
in the distant elms, and felt and knew that 
in this slumber there are no dreams and that 
with the dead all is well. 

Artemas Ward died in Southampton: 
Edward Sothern is buried there. It seems 
but yesterday since those lords of frolic 
were my companions ; but the grass has 
long been growing over them and even the 
echo of their laughter has died away. His- 
toric association dignifies a place ; but it is 
the personal association that makes it fa- 
miliar. From Southampton the Pilgrim 
Fathers, nearly three hundred years ago, 
sailed away to found another England in 
the western wild. Innumerable legends of 
that kind haunt the town and hallow it. 
Yet to one dreamer its name will ever, first 
of all, bring back the slumberous whisper 
of leaves that ripple in a summer wind 
and the balm of flowers that breathe their 
blessing on a comrade's rest. 



PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 25 



II. 



PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 

A PLEASANT course, if you would drift 
from the channel coast into the Mid- 
lands, is to go from Southampton, by either 
Winchester or less directly by Salisbury, to 
Basingstoke, and thence northward by Read- 
ing and Oxford. Another good way — 
which has been mine — is to loiter slowly 
along the west of England, taking the track 
of the cathedral towns, and viewing what- 
ever of historic interest may be observed in 
those places and in the pleasant and mem- 
orable regions that environ them. There 
should be no inexorable route, — for the 
chief charm of English travel is liberty of 
caprice ; and whichever way you turn you 
are sure to find some peculiar beauty that 
will reward your quest. My path (July 
1891) has traversed Salisbury, Amesbury, 
Stonehenge, Glastonbury, Wells, Cheddar, 
Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester, and Eves- 
ham : and all the while it has seemed to 



26 PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 

wind through a fairy reahii of flowers and 
of dreams. Each part of England has its 
charming peculiarities, but the general char- 
acteristics of English scenery are uniform. 
The cities are the workshops : the rest is 
one great garden of diversified and ever- 
changing beauty. As you range through 
the country you gaze on wooded hills in the 
glimmering distance, dark or bright beneath 
skies of rain or sun — never one thing long, 
but always fickle, like a capricious girl 
whose loveliness is the more bewitchmg be- 
cause unsure. Green fields fill the fore- 
ground, in which cattle are grazing and 
sheep are couched beneath the trees. Here 
and there a stately manor-house gleams 
from its lordly grove. Little cottages, pic- 
turesque with roofs of thatch and with tiny 
latticed windows, nestle by the roadside. 
Some of the fields have Just been gleaned 
and ploughed, so that the bare earth, in rich 
brown squares, affords a lively contrast 
with meadows of brilliant grass and masses 
of rippling barley. Now and then you see 
a comely mare, with her awkward little colt, 
reposing in the shadow of a copse. Yellow 
haystacks, artfully trimmed, attract the eye, 
and circular clumps of trees upon the hill- 
slopes attest the wise, prescient care of the 



PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 2/ 

gardeners of long ago. The land is gently 
undulating and in the valleys there are rows 
of pollard willows, by which you may trace 
the current of a hidden stream. Far away, 
or near at hand sometimes, suddenly appears 
a gray spire or a grim tower, suggesting a 
thought of monastic seclusion or a reminis- 
cence of historic antiquity. White roads, 
often devoid for many miles equally of vehi- 
cles and pedestrians, wind through the level 
plains and over the ridges of lonely hills. 
Rivers gleam in the landscape, some rapid 
and some tranquil. Rain- clouds drift fre- 
quently over the scene, but only serve to 
make it more sweetly beautiful. The past 
and the present are softly blended in a gen- 
tle pageant of wood and meadow, park and 
common, church and castle, lawn and past- 
ure, clouds that are like cloth of bronze, and 
earth that is clad in emerald and scarlet ; 
while over the broad expanse of this various 
loveliness, in which the fresh garlands of 
Nature deck with perennial bloom the 
crumbling relics of an historic architectural 
grandeur that is dead and gone, the skies of 
summer brood with a benediction of peace. 
It is the natural desire for change of 
scenery that prompts an Englishman to 
visit other lands ; but he can find no other 



28 pagp:antry and kelics. 

land that is as rich as his own in those 
treasures of suggestion wliicli are the chief 
gain of travel. One picture of the old famil- 
iar Shakespeare country may stand for 
many that are constantly within his reach. 
A spiral stair of forty-five steps gives access, 
for the adventurous explorer, to the ring- 
ing-loft of the tower of Stratford church, i 
and a ladder of nineteen rounds will then 
conduct him to the bell-chamber above. 
He may climb further if he likes to do so, 
and ascend into the interior of the stone 
spire. This is not the oak spire, covered 
with lead, that Shakespeare saw, but one 
that replaced it in 1746. From the ring- 
ing-loft a small portal will give egress to 
the chancel roof. In all directions the 
prospect from the tower is beautiful. 
Looking westward along the nave, the ob- 
server will view a considerable part of the 
old town, — the slate roofs of its thick- 
clustering, red-brick dwellings wet with 
recent rain and shining in the fitful sun- 
light, — and beyond it the bold crest and 

1 In the winding staiv that leads to the top of the 
great tower of Warwick Castle there are one hundred 
and thirty-three steps. In the spiral that leads to 
the top of the tower of St. Mary's church, Warwick, 
there are one hundred and sixty. , 



PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 29 

green slopes of Borden hill, where "the 
wild thyme" grows in sweet luxuriance, 
and where, since it is close to Shottery, the 
poet, as he strolled with his sweetheart in 
those distant days when love was young, 
possibly may have found (as many Shake- 
speareans think he did) the fragrant ' ' bank ' ' 
of the Midsummer NigliVs Dream. South- 
ward stands the crag-like hill of Meon, once 
a stronghold of the Danes, and far away 
the lonely Broadway tower looms faintly 
on the ridge of its emerald highland. 
Further still and still more dimly visible is 
the wavering outline of the Malvern hills. 
In the north, weltering beneath the sombre 
rain-clouds of retreating storm, are the 
green heights of Welcombe, where once the 
Saxons had a fortified camp ; while near at 
hand you see the turrets of the Shakespeare 
Memorial ; stately Avonbank with its 
wealth of various trees and its flower- 
spangled terraces ; and the old churchyard 
of Stratford, in which the roses bloom freely 
over man's decay, and in which the gray, 
lichen- covered stones are cold and forlorn 
against the brilliant green of the sun-smit- 
ten sod. A wide stretch of dark emerald 
meadow, intersected with long, dense hedge- 
rows of hawthorn ^nd wild honeysuckle, 



30 PAGEANTRY AND RELICS. 

fills the near prospect, in the east, while 
gently sloping hills extend into the distance 
beyond, some wooded and some bare, and 
all faintly enwreathed with silver mist. At 
the base of the tower flows the Avon, its 
dark waters wrinkled by the breeze. Rooks 
are cawing over Avonbank. Swifts and 
swallows are twittering around the spire. 
The leafy boughs of those great elms 
that engirdle Shakespeare's church toss 
and rustle in the strong wind. Sudden 
shafts of sunlight illumine the lovely 
pageant, far and near, and soon the glory 
of the west fades into that tender gloaming 
which is the crowning charm of the English 
summer day. There is no need to roam 
far afield when you can gaze upon scenes at 
home that are at once so lovely to the vision 
and so enchanting with association for the 
imaginative mind. 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 3 1 



III. 

THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 

THE renovation of the Shakespeare church 
has not (July 1891) been completed ; 
but only a few old things in it remain to be 
destroyed, and no doubt the final strokes 
will be delivered within a short time. The 
glory and the grandeur of that old church 
cannot, indeed, be entirely despoiled, even 
by the superserviceable zeal of bigotry and 
the regulative spirit of button -making con- 
vention. Something of venerable majesty 
must still survive in the gray, mossy stones 
of that massive tower and in the gloomy 
battlements of nave and chancel through 
which the winds of night sigh sadly over 
Shakespeare's dust. The cold sublimity 
of the ancient fabric, with its environment 
of soft and gentle natural beauty and its 
associations of poetic renown, can never be 
wholly dispelled. Almost everything has 
been done, however, that could be done to 
make the place modern and conventional. 



32 THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 

The appearance of the church, especially of 
its interior, has been materially changed. 
A few of the changes were, perhaps, essen- 
tial, and those may have been made wisely ; 
and all of the changes have been made with 
mechanical skill if not always with taste. 
A few more touches, and the inside of the 
ancient building will be as neat and prim 
as a box of candles. That was the avowed 
object of the restoration — to make the 
church appear as it used to appear when it 
was built and before it had acquired any 
association whatever ; and that object has 
been measurably accomplished. But all 
change here was an injury. 

When all is over and old things have been 
made new the devotees of Shakespeare may 
be asked what it is of which they think they 
have reason to complain. Their answer is 
ready. They wanted to have the church 
repaired ; they did not want to have it re- 
built. Alteration was unnecessary and it 
was wrong. The Shakespeare church is a 
national monument. More than that — it 
is a literary shrine for all the world. There 
was an indescribable poetic charm about 
the old edifice, which had been bestowed 
upon it not by art but by time. That charm 
needed only to be left untouched. Nothing 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 33 

should ever have been done to dispel it. 
The building had acquired character. It 
had become venerable with age, storied with 
association, and picturesque with quaint- 
ness. The suns and the storms of centuries 
had left their traces on its walls. The 
actions and sufferings, the inspirations and 
eccentricities of successive generations had 
impressed themselves upon its fabric. It had 
been made individual and splendid, — like 
a visage of some noble old saint of medise- 
val times, a face lined and seamed with 
thought, dignified with experience, subli- 
mated with conquered passion. Above all, 
it had enshrined, for nearly three hundred 
years, the ashes of the greatest poet — and 
therefore the greatest benefactor of human- 
ity — that ever lived. All that was asked 
was that it should be left alone. To repair , 
it in certain particulars became a necessity ; 
but to alter it was to do it an irreparable 
harm. That harm has been done ; and 
it is that which the Shakespeare scholar 
resents and deplores ; and he is right to 
do so. 

I lately went into the chancel and stood 

there alone, in front of the altar, and looked 

around — in amazement and sorrow. The 

aspect of that chancel is no longer ancient ; 

c 



34 THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 

it is new. The altar lias been moved from 
its place against the east wall, beneath the 
great window, and has been elevated upon 
a double pedestal. The floor around it has 
been paved with encaustic tiles, of hideous 
brown and yellow. Almost all the mural 
tablets upon the north and south walls have 
been carried away, and they may now be 
found dispersed in the transepts, while their 
place is to be filled with a broad expanse of 
wooden panels, extending from the backs of 
the miserere stalls upward to the sills of the 
windows. The stalls themselves have been 
repaired — but this was necessary, because 
the wooden, foundations of them had become 
much decayed. And, finally, the stone 
screens that filled half of the window back 
of Shakespeare's monument and half of the 
window back of the busts of Judith Combe 
and her lover i have been removed. The 
resultant effect — which would be excellent 
in a modern hotel but which is detestable 

1 Judith Combe died in August 1649, — just prior 
to her purposed marriage, — " in ye armes of liim 
■wlio most entirely loved and was beloved of her, 
even to ye very death." She belonged, no doubt, to 
the family of John-a-Corabe, who died July 10, 1614, 
and whose tomb is at the north side of the chancel 
window of the Shakespeare church. The tomb at 
the south side is that of James Kendal, 1751. 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH, 35 

here — is the effect of enterprise and nov- 
elty. The pervading air is tliat of the 
new broom and tlie modern improvements. 
Those improvements, no doubt, are fine ; 
but if ever tliere was a place on earth where 
they are inappropriate that place is the 
Shakespeare church. They suit well with 
it as a place of ecclesiastical ritual, and if 
the church were merely that nobody would 
greatly care even if it were made as bright 
as a brass band. But since it is the literary 
shrine of the world no one who appreciates 
its value can fail to regret that the ruthless 
hand of innovation has been permitted to 
degrade it, in any degree whatever, to the 
level of the commonplace. 

When Dean Balsall (obiit 1491) built 
the chancel of that church, about four 
hundred years ago (1480), he placed it 
against a little stone building, the remnant 
of an ancient monastery — as good antiqua- 
rian scholars believe — which was long used 
as the priest's study and under which was 
a charnel house or crypt. [A great mass 
of human bones was removed from that 
crypt about 1886, and buried in a pit in the 
churchyard.] The stone screen in the 
lower half of the Shakespeare window was 
necessary as a part of the sustaining wall 



36 THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 

between the old structure and the new one, 
and later it was found useful as a back- 
ground for the Shakespeare monument. 
Against that screen the bust of the poet 
was placed by his children and his friends, 
and as they saw it and knew it and left it, 
so it should have been preserved and per- 
petuated. So until this period it has re- 
mained; but the pilgrim to Stratford church 
hereafter will never see the bust of Shake- 
speare as it was seen by his daughters. A 
link that bound us to the past has been 
severed and no skill of man can now avail 
to restore it. Back of the bust has been 
placed a stained window, commemorative 
of J. 0. Halliwell-Phillipps, the renowned 
Shakespeare scholar. This was put in on 
July 27, 1891, late in the afternoon ; and 
that same night it was my fortune to have 
a view of it, from within and from without. 
The light of the gloaming had not yet 
faded. The bell-ringers were at practice in 
the tower, and the sweet notes of the Blue 
Bells of Scotland were wafted downward in 
a shower of silver melody upon the still air 
of haunted chancel and darkening nave. 
Enough of light yet lingered to display the 
fresh embellishment, and I examined it 
closely and viewed it for a long time. It 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 3/ 

is exceedingly ugly — being prosaic in de- 
sign and coarse in colour. The principal 
object in its composition is the head of a 
bull which, engirt with flames, rests upon 
a heap of stones, encircled with a rivulet 
of ultramarine blue. Upon each side, in 
contrasted groups, stand several figures, 
two or three of them visible at full length, 
but most of them visible only in part. Of 
human heads the picture contains eleven. 
The chief colours are blue, purple, bronze, 
scarlet, and gray. The action of the prin- 
cipal figures is spirited and the treatment of 
the faces shows artistic skill — those qual- 
ities of charm being the merits of the work. 
As a memorial, the window means noth- 
ing, while its implied reference to one of 
the stories of Jewish history is completely 
unimportant. The inscription is from the 
Bible: "And with the stones he built an 
altar in the name of the Lord." The mean- 
ing of this is figurative and it is reverent 
and irreproachable. Yet the observer who 
reads that sentence can scarcely repress a 
smile when he remembers that the stones 
which were taken from the Shakespeare 
window, to make room for this pretentious 
deformity, now form a channel for hot-air 
pipes under the chancel floor. It is some- 



38 THE SHAKESPEARE CHUKCH. 

thing, however, that they were put to use, 
and not treated as rubbish. 

The necessity for saving a relic here and 
there seems not to have been ignored. The 
stone reading-desk that long adorned this 
church was sold to a stone-mason in the 
Warwick road ; the top of the stone pulpit 
was thrown away ; but the broken and 
battered font, at which possibly the poet 
was baptized, has been placed upon the 
pillar that formerly supported the stone 
pulpit, and this structure may now be seen 
in the southwest corner of the nave. There 
also have been placed the three carved can- 
opies of stone that formerly impended over 
the sedalia in the chapel of Thomas a' 
Becket, — now occupied by the organ 
works. In the south transept stand two 
large gravestones, the memorials of former 
vicars, which were removed from the chan- 
cel — where they ought to have been left. 
The lately discovered (1890) gravestone of 
Judith Combe has been placed in the chan- 
cel floor, beneath her bust. In making 
repairs, the vault of Dean Balsall, which is 
close to that of Shakespeare, was broken 
open, and it was inspected if not ex- 
plored — but the remains were not dis- 
turbed. Let us be properly thankful for 



THE SHAKESPEARE CHURCH. 39 

SO much forbearance. The time was when 
the present vicar of Stratford, Eev. George 
Arbuthnot, gave his consent that the grave 
of Sliakespeare might be opened ; i and there 
are uneasy spirits still extant whom inquis- 
itive curiosity would quickly impel to that 
act of desecration. Whatever remnant sur- 
vives, therefore, of the spirit of reverence 
in the ecclesiastical authority of Stratford 
ought to be prized and cherished. 

1 Readers who wish to know why it is thought by 
some people that the grave of Shakespeare ought to 
be explored will find dubious reasons set forth in a 
curious and interesting book called Shakespeare'' s 
Bones, written by C. M. Ingleby, LL.D., 1883. Dr. 
Ingleby has collected many striking facts with regard 
to the explorations of other hallowed tombs. He 
appears to think it probable that the relics of Shake- 
speare have already been rifled : but this is conject- 
ure. His assertion that a fresh stone was laid over 
Shakespeare's grave not much more than fifty years 
ago is not supported by any authority that I can find. 



4.0 A STRATFOUD CHRONICLE. 



IV. 

A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 

THE old Guild Hall and Grammar School 
of Stratford is to be restored. This 
good work was begun in 1891 by Charles 
Edward Flower, the chief benefactor of 
Shakespeare's town. The exterior of that 
building was covered with plaster in 1786. 
It is purposed to remove the plaster and 
expose the ancient timbers, whereby the 
picturesque aspect of the structure will 
be greatly enhanced. The building, how- 
ever, will not be altered ; it will only 
be relieved of disfigurements that were 
foisted upon it in comparatively recent 
times. Those disfigurements include the 
panelling of the interior, beneath which, no 
doubt, will be discovered some remains of 
antique decoration. At the south end of 
the hall traces have already been observed 
of what may once have been a fresco of the 
Crucifixion. • On the walls of the council 
chamber, now occupied by the head-master 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 41 

of the Grammar School, two frescoes of 
large roses were recently discovered — em- 
blems that possibly were placed there to com- 
memorate the happy ending of the Wars 
of the Roses, in August 1485, three years 
after the formal foundation of the school of 
Thomas Jolyffe.i One interesting relic of 
the Shakespeare period, and indeed of a 
much earlier period, must be sacrificed — 
the cottage, in the rear of the hall, which 
is known as the schoolmaster's house, and 
in which lived Walter Eoche,^ who is be- 
lieved to have been Shakespeare's teacher. 
That cottage has greatly suffered beneath 
the ravages of time, and it is now a total 
wreck. The chapel of the Guild needs res- 

1 The Rev. Mr. Laffan says that the school existed 
in embryo as early as 1412, and that a new house for 
its accommodation was erected by the Guild of the 
Holy Cross in 1427. The estate of the Guild was 
confiscated by Henry VIH., but the school was re- 
established by Edward VI. in 1553, and since that 
time it has been called The King's New School, or 
King Edward VI. Grammar School. The build- 
ing was repaired and decorated in 1568. The boy 
Shakespeare, it is believed, began to attend the 
school in 1571. 

2 The signature of Walter Roche, exceedingly 
rare, is on a deed dated 1578, relative to a tenement 
in Ely street, Hereford, preserved in the astonishing 
and precious collection made by the late J. O. Halli- 
well-Phillipps. 



42 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 

toration and probably soon will receive it ; 
but when that sacred edifice is touched the 
most reverent care will be taken to preserve 
unchanged the aspect of venerable majesty 
that long has made it one of the most im- 
pressive churches in England. The clergy- 
man who presides over the Guild chapel is 
the head- master of the Grammar School, the 
Rev. R. S. De Courcy Laffan, — a scholar, 
a Shakespearean, a man of feeling and 
taste ; and it is certain that no desecration 
will be permitted by him. The church of 
Shakespeare's sepulchre has been marred. 
The church associated with his school-days 
will be scrupulously preserved. 

Joseph Skipsey, the Newcastle poet, who 
in the summer of 1889 succeeded Miss 
Maria Chataway as custodian of the Shake- 
speare Birthplace, resigned that office and 
withdrew from it in October 1891. No 
true successor to the Chataway sisters has 
been found, or is likely to be found, for the 
office of custodian of that venerable house. 
The Chataway sisters retired from their 
post in June 1889, after seventeen years 
of service. The elder, Miss Maria Chata- 
way, who officially held the place, was over 
seventy-eight years old ; the younger, Miss 
Caroline Chataway, her assistant, was sev- 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 43 

enty-six. It was Miss Caroline who usually 
escorted the visitor through the principal 
rooms, and who told, in such a quaintly 
characteristic way, the story of the building 
as a relic of Shakespeare days : and it seems 
not likely that anybody else will ever tell 
the tale so well. The Chataway sisters, on 
leaving the Shakespeare Birthplace, took up 
their residence in a" cottage in the War- 
wick road. Miss Maria Chataway died on 
January 31, 1891. 

The trustees of the Shakespeare Birth- 
place were authorized by an act of Par- 
liament, March 16, 1891, to use, for the 
purchase of other Shakespeare property, 
whatever surplus of money had accumulated 
in their possession. They have bought, for 
£3000, the Anne Hathaway cottage, which 
was the home of the poet's wife, and they 
intend to buy the Mary Arden cottage, at 
Wilmcote, which was the home of the poet's 
mother. Mrs. Mary Taylor Baker continues 
to reside in the Hathaway house and to 
show the wainscot, the great timbers, the 
antique bedstead, the dresser, the settle, 
and the fire-place with which it is believed 
that Shakespeare and his Anne were long 
and happily familiar. Mrs. Baker's pedigree, 
as the descendant and representative of the 



44 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 



Hathaway family of Shakespeare's time, 
is set clown as follows in lier old family 
Bible : — 



Susan Hathawaj'. 



William Taylor. 



John Hathaway Taylor, x 



Mary Kemp. 



William Taylor. 



Elizabeth Dobbin. 



Mary Taylor. 



George Baker. 



The marriage of Mary Taylor to George 
Baker occurred in 1840. The Susan Hatha- 
way who stands at the head of this pedigree 
is understood to have been Anne Hatha- 
way 's niece. 

There are credulous persons who believe 
in what is called the Ely Palace Portrait 
of Shakespeare. Mr. Henry Graves, long 
noted as a connoisseur of art and as one of 
the best authorities in the kingdom as to 
such a matter, believes in it and he has 
been heard to say that he would value the 
painting at five hundred guineas or at any 
fancy price above that figure. The Ely 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 45 

Palace Portrait of Shakespeare was discov- 
ered in London and was bought by Bishop 
Turton, of Ely, in 1846. It purports to 
have been an heirloom in a family resident 
in Little Britain, and personally known to 
Shakespeare, and the story of it declares 
that it was painted in Shakespeare's time. 
In contour and expression it bears some 
resemblance to the Dreshout likeness. The 
face, however, is thin and pale and the 
eyes are small. In May 1891 this portrait 
was, for the first time in many years, taken 
out of its frame, in order that the glass 
might be cleaned, and then was observed 
the following inscription upon the left-hand 
upper corner of the canvas: "AE. 39. X 
1603." Its existence had not before been 
known at the Birthplace, but subsequent 
inquiry has ascertained that the inscription 
was known to Bishop Turton when he 
bought the picture, and doubtless it had 
an effect upon his judgment of its authen- 
ticity. The Ely Palace Portrait is preserved 
at the Birthplace, where it is an interesting 
feature in the collection that was made for 
the museum department by William Oakes 
Hunt and J. 0. Halliwell-Phillipps. 

Among Shakespeare relics that long sur- 
vived in Stratford, but now have disap- 



46 A STRATFOED CHRONICLE. 

peared, was the old house of Avonbank. 
That building stood next to the principal 
gate of Trinity churchyard, on land that 
now forms part of the estate of Charles 
Edward Flower, and it was designated, in 
the town records, " the House of St. Mary 
in old town." Thomas Green, who has 
been variously styled "the poet's cousin" 
and "the poet's intimate friend," — he was 
town-clerk of Stratford from 1614 to 1617, — 
lived there, and accordingly it is reasonable 
to suppose that the house may have been 
one of Shakespeare's habitual resorts. Each 
room in it had a name. One was called 
"the churchyard room"; one "the bee- 
hive " ; one " the end " ; one " the middle" ; 
and one "the bird's nest." 

Another Shakespeare relic that has dis- 
appeared is the old Market Cross of Strat- 
ford. That structure, often seen by Shake- 
speare, was surely as old as the early time 
of Queen Elizabeth. It stood close by the 
southwest corner of High street and Wood 
street and was apparently used for a 
market. At a meeting of the Common 
Council of Stratford, held August 2, 1794, 
it was "agreed that the house at the Cross, 
late in the possession of Mr. Robert Man- 
der, be wholly taken down and laid open to 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 47 

the road ; that Mr. Taylor take down the 
house and be careful to put the materials 
by for the use of the corporation." So 
said, so done. The Cross was taken down 
and removed in one day, — Saturday, August 
11, 1821, — and its base was finally placed in 
the centre walk of the Shakespeare Birth- 
place garden. The foundation stone of the 
ugly market-house now standing at the junc- 
tion of Wood street and Henley street was 
laid by George Morris, Mayor of Stratford, 
on the coronation day of George IV, 

Charles Edward Flower's Memorial thea- 
tre edition of Shakespeare's plays includes 
the thirty-seveji plays and fills eight volumes. 
This edition is intended equally for the actor 
and the reader. Each play is printed in 
full, but while the text that is spoken on the 
stage is given in brevier, the passages that 
are usually omitted are given in minion. 
The text is genuine, and the editorial 
work has been done with scholarship, taste, 
veneration, and patient zeal. In several 
cases Mr. Flower was obliged to make new 
stage versions — notably in those of The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona^ Love's Labour''s 
Lost, The Comedy of Errors, and the first 
part of Henry VL Those new versions 
have been acted at the Memorial theatre, 



48 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 

and without exception they were successful. 
The edition was printed by George Boyden, 
at the Stratford Herald press. 

The library of the Shakespeare Memo- 
rial now contains 6260 volumes. There are 
236 English editions of Shakespeare in that 
collection. Among the relics that have been 
obtained are the manuscript of the late 
Charles Mackay's treatise on Obscure Words 
in Shakespeare' s Plays, and a human skull 
that was used as " Yorick's skull, the king's 
jester," by John Philip Kemble and by 
Edmund Kean, when playing Hamlet. The 
store of relics in Stratford is naturally con- 
siderable, and many of them are of great 
interest. An uncommonly fine autograph 
of Robert Burns is owned by Mr. William 
Hutchings, of this town, and the original 
manuscript of the letter that Dr. Johnson 
addressed (June 26, 1777) to Dr. Dodd, 
the forger, then under sentence of death, 
is one of the possessions of Alderman 
Bird. 

Robert Bell Wheler,i the historian of 
Stratford, was buried in Trinity churchyard, 
together with several of his relatives. We 

^ An autograph letter from Robert Bell "Wheler 
has come into my possession, which is interesting 
not only as a relic of the historian but because of a 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 49 

are soon forgotten when we are dead, — as in- 
timated by poor old Eip Van Winkle, — and 
the burial-place of the venerable antiquary 
is fast hastening to decay. The graves of 
the Wheler family are enclosed within a tall 
iron fence and over them the grass grows 
thick and wild. A double stone marks 
the spot, on which is the following in- 
scription : — 



reference that it makes to one of the most distin- 
guished names in recent American history. It is 
addressed to the antiquary John Go ugh Nichols, 
F.S.A., No. 25 Parliament-st., London. 

" Dear Sir; Mr. Sumner, an American gentleman 
to whom I was last summer introduced by a friend 
of his residing in this place, wishes to inspect York- 
ington's Pilgrimage, Mr. S, having, as I understood, 
visited some of the places mentioned in it. I have 
taken the liberty of giving him your address, which 
I trust you will pardon, and I shall feel obliged by 
your allowing him to inspect the MS, or the copy, 
but of course not to take either of them out of your 
possession. And should he desire to make any ex- 
tracts, I leave that to your wishes, as I hardly know 
what use you may require to make of the Journal. 
When you have done with the MS. I shall be happy 
in receiving it back, with the copy. And I remain, 
dear sir, very truly yours, 

" Robert Bell Wheler. 

" Stratford-upon-Avon, 31st Deer., 1842. 

" Mr. Sumner dates from 38 Duke St., St. 
James's." 

D 



50 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 

In memory of 

Robert Whblbr, Gent., 

Who died 

29th August, 1819, 

Aged 77 years. 

Also of his daughter, 

Elizabeth Wheleb, 

Who died 29th May, 1852, 

Aged 72 years. 

In memory of 

Robert Bell Wheler 

(Only son of Robert Wheler) 

Who died 15th July, 1857, 

Aged 72 years. 

Also of Ann Wheler, 

Daughter of Robert Wheler, 

Who died 13th Sept., 1870, 

Aged 87 years. 

The historian's mother died at Quinton 
and was buried in the churchyard of that 
place, on the southeast side of the church — 
the stone that marks her sepulchre being 
inscribed as follows : — 

In memory of 

Elizabeth Wheler, 

Wife of Robert Wheler, 

Of Stratford-upon-Avon. 

She died 13 April, 1786, 

Aged 29. 

Making a visit to the old city of Glouces- 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 5 1 

ter, it was my privilege to see the Shake- 
speare relics that are preserved there, — in 
a dwelling in Westgate street, occupied by 
the family of Fletcher, dealers in fire-arms. 
Mrs. E. Fletcher, who died in 1890, at an 
advanced age, claimed to be a collateral de- 
scendant from Shakespeare, and she always 
strenuously maintained that those memo- 
rials of the poet, a Jug and a Cane, had 
been handed down, through succeeding gen- 
erations, in the family, from Shakespeare's 
time. The tradition declares that Shake- 
speare once owned and used those articles, 
and the religious care with which they have 
been guarded is a proof that the tradition 
has not lacked power. Each of them is en- 
closed in a case of wood and glass, and I 
found the cases in a locked room. The Jug 
is made of stone-ware, and is of a simple 
and usual form, having panelled sides with 
figures embossed upon them ; and it is sur- 
mounted with a metal lid. The Cane is a 
Malacca joint, fully four feet long. As it 
was enclosed I could not take it into my 
hands for close examination, but I saw that 
it is such a cane as was customarily carried 
in the days of Queen Elizabeth and James I. 
Miss Fletcher, who showed those relics, 
spoke of them with veneration, and she dis- 



52 A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 

played a large box of papers, both written 
and printed, relative to their history. 
"They are not now for sale," she said, 
' ' but they will be hereafter. ' ' They have 
several times been exhibited in public, and 
they are always shown to the wanderer who 
will take the trouble to inquire for them. 
An effigy of Shakespeare looks down upon 
them from the wall of the little parlour in 
which they are enshrined ; and it was easy, 
when standing in their presence — in the 
ancient and romantic city of Gloucester, 
with haunting historic shapes on every hand 
— to credit their sanctity as objects that 
Shakespeare knew and touched. 



DEATH OF CHARLES EDWARD FLOWER. 

May 10, 1892. —The death of Charles 
Edward Flower is a bereavement to the 
town of Stratford-upon-Avon and it deprives 
the Shakespeare fraternity of one of its best 
friends. Mr. Flower was a native of Strat- 
ford-upon-Avon, and he grew up there to be 
one of its most respected citizens. He loved 
and venerated the name of Shakespeare ; 
he was solicitous for the credit of his native 
place ; and he wished' that Stratford might 
always prove worthy of its association with 



A STRATFORD CHRONICLE. 53 

the first poet of the world. He possessed 
large wealth and he used it freely for the 
honour and advancement of his town. He 
was the founder of the Shakespeare Memo- 
rial : he gave the land on which it stands 
and also the greater part of the money 
that built it, and he gave and improved and 
beautified the gardens by which it is en- 
closed. The corner-stone of the Memorial 
was laid on April 23, 1877, and the build- 
ing was opened, with a performance of 
Much Ado About Nothing, on April 23, 
1879. Mr. Flower was constantly adding 
books to its library. One of the gifts that 
he had in store for it was a set of the four 
folios of Shakespeare. He edited the Me- 
morial edition of Shakespeare's plays. He 
was active in every good work in Stratford, 
and he was respected and beloved by the 
whole community. One of the last of his 
labours was the restoration of the Guild 
Hall and Grammar School of Stratford. 
That work of restoration will go on, and 
Stratford will soon possess another object 
of antique beauty. Whenever a good deed 
was to be done his liberality never halted. 
Hundreds of Americans who have visited 
Stratford will remember his hospitality and 
recall with pleasure his kindness, his cheer- 



54 A STKATFORD CHRONICLE. 

ful sympathy, and the refinements and 
graces of his beautiful home. Not anywhere 
in tlie world remains a more devoted wor- 
shipper of Shakespeare, a more practical 
friend of literature and art, a more public- 
spirited citizen, or a man of more inflexible 
principle and sterling integrity. Under an 
austere demeanour Mr. Flower veiled with- 
out being able to conceal tenderness of heart, 
gentleness of temperament, quick apprecia- 
tion of merit and of goodness, and a fine 
sense of humour. He left no children. 
His widow — in whom his virtues were 
reflected and increased, and in whom his 
goodness survives — possesses in her be- 
reavement a sympathy too deep for words. 
Mr. Flower was born February 3, 1830, 
and he was educated at the Grammar 
School of Stratford — the school of Shake- 
speare. In 1852 he married Sarah, daughter 
of Mr. Peter Martineau, of Highbury, Mid- 
dlesex. He passed his whole life in his 
native town. He died suddenly, at AVar- 
wick, on May 3, 1892, and was buried on 
May 7, in the Stratford cemetery. 

" Your cause of sorrow 
Must not be measured by his worth, for then 
It hath no end." 



FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 55 



FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 

CALAIS, France, August 31, 1891. —It 
is early morning in London. The rain 
has been falling all night, and in the gray 
of the dawn it continues to fall — not now 
in showers but intermittently and in a cold 
drizzle. The sky is dark and sullen, and 
through the humid, misty air the towers 
and spires of the majestic city loom shadow- 
like, fantastic, and strange. Pools of water 
stand here and there in the streaming, slip- 
pery streets, which are almost devoid 
equally of vehicles and pedestrians. The 
shop-keepers of Kensington have not yet 
awakened, and as my cab rolls through the 
solitary highways I see that only in a few 
places have the shutters been taken from 
the windows. Victoria is presently reached, 
where, at this early hour, only a few peo- 
ple are astir, so that the confusion and 
clamour of British travel have not yet be- 
gun. Soon our train rumbles out of the 



56 FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 

Station and we feel that all personal respon- 
sibility has been dropped and that we have 
yielded to fate — at least till we reach 
Dover. The skies begin to brighten as we 
cross the Thames, while, gently ruffled by 
the morning breeze, the broad expanse of 
the river shows like a sheet of wrinkled 
steel. At first we speed among long rows 
of houses, all built alike — the monotonous 
suburban dwellings of towns such as Wands- 
worth and Clapham, with their melancholy 
little gardens, all dripping with recent rain, . 
in which marigolds are beginning to bloom, 
and great, heavy sunflowers hang their dis- 
consolate heads. Nothinghere seems joyous 
except the grass, but this has profited by the 
pertinacious rain and is richer and greener 
than ever. Presently the gardens and 
dwellings grow more opulent. The wind 
rises with the advance of day and soon the 
dense foliage about the hill and vale of 
Heme stirs and rustles in the gladness of 
its careless life. Now begins the gentle 
pageant of English rural scenery — that 
blending of soft colour and quaint, delicate 
object, the like of which is nowhere to be 
found except in England. Every traveller 
will remember, and will rejoice to remem- 
ber, the elements of that delicious picture — 



FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 57 

the open, far-reaching stretches of pasture, 
level, green, and fragrant ; the beds of 
many-coloured flowers, flashing on emerald 
lawns ; the fleecy sheep, the sleek horses, 
and the comely cattle, grouped or scattered 
in the fields, some feeding, some ruminant, 
some in motion, and some asleep ; the deep, 
lush grass and clover ; the nurseries of fruit- 
trees ; the flying glimpses of gray church- 
towers and of shining streams ; and over 
all the frequent flights of solemn rooks and 
frolicsome starlings that seem at times 
almost to make a darkness in the air. 

Soon the opulent, aristocratic fa9ade of 
ancient Dulwich College — at once the 
memorial and the sepulchre of Shake- 
speare's friend Edward Alleyne — smiles 
upon us across the meadows and witches 
us with thoughts of a memorable past. 
Leaving Dulwich we run through a long 
tunnel and in a few moments, dashing 
across the plain of Penge, we perceive the 
lofty tower and Olympian fabric of the 
Crystal Palace shining on the hills of Syden- 
ham. This is a fertile, rolling country, much 
diversified with hill and valley. All around 
us the banks are scarlet with innumerable 
standards of the gorgeous poppy and golden 
with flowers of the colt's foot, and many 



58 FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 

red-roofed farm-houses are momentarily 
visible in the green depths of lofty groves. 
Our way lies through hop fields now, and 
the air is delicious with the zestful perfume 
of their blossoms. We traverse beds of 
wild fern and of many kinds of underwoods, 
and in fields that are divided by hedges of 
lovely hawthorn we see many sheaves of 
the yellow harvest. Quaint little villages 
are passed, each group of cottages nestled 
around its gray old church, like children 
clustered at a parent's knee. The door- 
yards are gay with marigolds. There are 
broad patches of clover in copious, fragrant 
bloom, and on the distant horizon the green 
hills, crowned with dark groves, loom 
gloomily under straggling clouds. The 
wind blows chill, the sky takes on a cold, 
silvery hue, and innumerable starlings, fly- 
ing low, look like black dots upon the dome 
of heaven. Our speed is great, and we 
leave long trails of thick, smoky vapour that 
melts through the trees and hedges or seems 
to sink into the ground. At Sole a lovely 
rural region is opened and the sky begins 
to smile. Yonder on the hillside a vener- 
able church-tower shows its grim parapet. 
In the opposite quarter there are hills, thick 
wooded or capped with sheaves of the har- 



FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 59 

vest — sadly marred, this autumn, by the 
rough weather of as drear an August as 
England has known. All the same this 
scene keeps its picturesque beauty — • the 
peace of deep vales in which boughs wave, 
streams murmur, and stately rooks are 
seeking their food ; the peace of old red or 
gray farm-houses veiled with ivy and nestled 
among flowers. The banks of the Medway 
are near at hand and across the crystal 
bosom of that beautiful river rises the black 
ruin of Rochester castle, flecked with lichen 
and haunted by hosts of doves, and near it 
the pinnacled tower of Rochester cathedral, 
romantic in itself but made more romantic 
by the art of the great genius who loved it 
so well. Here Dickens laid the scene of 
his exquisite story of Edwin Broody and 
not far away from this spot stands the old, 
lonely house of Gadshill in which he died. 
The little town of Rochester is all astir. 
The wet, red roofs of its cosy dwellings 
glisten in the welcome though transient 
sunshine, and on some of those houses 
great mantles of green ivy sway gently in 
the rising wind. The river is full of ship- 
ping, — small craft and steamboats, — and 
the gaze of the pilgrim dwells delighted on 
brown sails, and tapering spars, and gay 



6o FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 

smoke-stacks, and the busy little boats that 
seem never at rest. Not many views in 
England possess such animation as pervades 
the spectacle of the valley of the Medv^ay 
at Rochester, and the lover of Dickens 
may well look upon it with affection and 
leave it with regret. 

We dash through a ravine of chalkstone 
now and have a fine prospect of martial 
Chatham, which is built in a valley but 
extends up the side of the adjacent east- 
ward hill ; and through one of its long 
highways our glance follows the plunging 
flight of a large flock of frightened sheep. 
At New-Brompton there are many small 
gray houses and there is a great profusion 
of red and yellow flowers. A wide reach of 
glistening water is presently seen, toward 
the east — which is the Medway, nearing 
the sea. Harvest fields extend almost to 
its verge and the country is level for miles 
— a marsh-land intersected with channels 
and pools. Presently we come again into 
hop-fields and we recognise the rich and 
blooming land of Kent. At ISTewington 
there are gloomier skies and dashes of sud- 
den rain, but the grass is thickly strewn 
with sumptuous white daisies, and the pros- 
pect of a noble antique church, with plen- 



FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 6l 

teous moss and lichen on its triple-gabled 
roof and with its square tower bosomed in 
foliage, would make any gazer forget the 
weather and cast all discomfort to the 
winds. Speeding past Sittingbourne you 
note the breezy activity of that thrifty 
place, the newly built manufactories, the 
tall, smoking chimneys, the fine mill, and 
the miller's still finer dwelling — so close to 
the brink of his great pond that not the build- 
ing only but the innumerable flowers that 
grow around it are reflected in the broad, 
gleaming pool. This sweet picture passes in 
an instant, and then, under rifts of blue in a 
sky of silver, come more of the drenched 
sheaves of the injured harvest. There is a 
vision of roads that are full of mire ; of glow- 
ing hop-fields ; of haystacks and thatched 
cottages ; of distant spires peeping out 
among the trees ; of windmills on the hill- 
tops; of harvesters gathering grain ; and of 
happy children that wave a greeting from 
poppy-spangled fields. Faversham now, and 
across the green levels, far away, rise the 
brown sails of barges and of other little ves- 
sels that ply the neighbouring sea. Near at 
hand the green hedges are full of white and 
red and yellow flowers, and many sheep 
are nibbling in the pastures or gazing with 



62 FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 

a comic wooden stare at our flying train. 
The sky continually changes, and here it is a 
dome of dark -gray and silver, across which, 
with astonishing speed, thin fleeces of rain- 
cloud career on the stormy wind. We are 
come into a beautiful valley, green on all 
sides and softly diversified with windmills, 
cottages, little gray churches, massive cones 
of golden hay, clumps of larch, lines of 
delicate silver birch, and large masses of 
fragrant hops — the thick vines of which 
hang so near that we can almost clutch 
their pendant blossoms as we pass. A veil 
of dim sunshine is cast over this verdurous 
scene, and as the vale broadens you may 
perceive a dazzling variety of objects — 
manor-house and cottage, grove and plain, 
fields that are brown and fields that are 
yellow, thin white roads that wind away 
over hill-tops and are lost in the distance, 
a bright and rapid stream that flashes 
through the meadow, and, grandly crown- 
ing the pageant and consecrating its beauty, 
the stately and splendid towers of Canter- 
bury cathedral. There they stand, majes- 
tic and glorious, with a thousand years of 
history upon their hallowed battlements, 
serene, predominant, and changeless amid 
the changes of a transitory and vanishing 



FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 6^ 

world. Nothing of architectural creation 
can excel in charm the spiritual loveliness 
of that cathedral. York and St. Paul's and 
Lincoln surpass it in massive grandeur ; 
Gloucester surpasses it in romance ; Dur- 
ham is more rugged and more savagely 
splendid ; Westminster is more rich with 
poetic association and with ecclesiastical 
ornament ; Ely possesses a greater variety 
of blended architectural styles and of eccen- 
tric character ; but, travel where you may, 
you never will behold a church more com- 
pletely radiant with the investiture of 
celestial sublimity. It won my heart years 
ago, and no one of its magnificent rivals 
has ever allured me from its shrine. 

There is no pause. Berkesbourne flashes 
by — its velvet plains slumbering under spa- 
cious elms and its fields of silken oat-grass 
blazing with poppies. All about Adisham 
the thatched cottages and the sheep in the 
pastures make a pretty picture of smiling 
content. The harvest is partly mown and 
partly erect. Eooks and small birds abound, 
and there are many patches of woodland 
near by, and many vacant plains. Now and 
then we run through deep ravines in the 
chalk. The country is hilly as we approach 
the sea, and on the gentle acclivities, here 



64 FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 

and there, is seen a manor-house, quaint 
with gables and latticed casements and 
draped with ivy. In the foreground are 
fields of clover, and looking beyond those 
your gaze falls upon wooded vales in which 
the dark sheen of the copper-beach shows 
boldly against the green of the elms. A 
little graveyard gleams for a moment on 
the hillside, — in mute token that Death 
also has his part in these scenes of fertile 
beauty, — and then we flit through the dark 
tunnel and come slowly to a pause beneath 
the noble cliffs of Dover. Nothing seems 
changed upon this romantic shore since 
those far-distant days when first I saw it. 
The sombre castle still frowns upon its crag. 
The great hillsides are solitary in the bleak 
light. The little cabin and the signal-stand- 
ard keep, as of old, their lonely vigil on 
the wind-beaten summit of the Shakespeare 
cliff. The massive stone pier, like a giant's 
arm, stretches into the sea and braves its 
power and defies its wrath. And on the 
vacant, desolate beach the endless surges 
still murmur their mysterious, everlasting 
dirge — the requiem of broken vows, and 
blighted hope, and all the vain and futile 
ambitions, passions, and sorrows of man- 
kind. The sea is wild, as our bark springs 



FROM LONDON TO DOVER. 65 

into its embrace ; the sky is full of white 
and slate-coloured clouds broken into fre- 
quent rifts of blue ; and the distant waves 
roll up in great purple masses crowned with 
plumes of silver. Many shapes of sails are 
visible on the distant horizon, and the air 
is so clear that I discern at the same mo- 
ment the high cliffs of Albion and the low- 
lying sandhills of France. It is an hour of 
memory and of thought ; of dreams and of 
visions ; and you forget the common life 
that is all around you, — the sailors at their 
tasks, the vacant chatter of the tourists, the 
clank of the engines, the swirl and strife 
of the waters and the winds, — to muse on 
old imperial battles that once incarnadined 
these seas, and to gaze on the ghostly gal- 
leons of the Spanish Armada, the pennons 
of the great admirals of Spain and France 
and Holland and England, the stately ships 
of Ealeigh and Drake,^of Collingwood and 
Rodney and Nelson, and, proudly stream- 
ing on the blast, that flag of Britannia which 
is still the austere emblem of human free- 
dom, the flag that has 

"Braved, a thousand years, 
The battle and the breeze." 



66 BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 



VI. 

BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 

IT was a beautiful afternoon in summer 
when first I saw the shores of France. 
The channel, a distressful water when rough, 
had been in unusual pleasure, like King 
Duncan in the play, so that " observation 
with extended view," could look with inter- 
est on the Norman coast, as it rose into 
sight across the surges. That coast seemed 
like the Palisade bank of the Hudson river, 
and prompted thoughts of home. It is high 
and precipitous and on one of its windy hills 
a little chapel is perched, in picturesque 
loneliness, east of the stone harbour into 
which the arriving steamer glides. At 
Dieppe, as at most of the channel ports, a 
long pier projects into the sea, and this 
was thronged with spectators, as the boat 
steamed to her moorings. The road from 
Dieppe to Paris passes through Rouen and 
up the valley of the Seine. The sky that 
day was as blue and sunny as ever it is in 



BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 67 

brilliant America ; the air was soft and 
cool ; and the fields of Normandy were 
lovely with rich colour and generous with 
abundance of golden crops. Now and then 
we passed little hamlets, made up of thatched 
cottages clustered around a tiny church, 
with its sad, quaint place of graves. Sheaves 
of wheat were stacked in careless piles in 
the meadows. Eows of the tall, lithe Lom- 
bardy poplar— so like the willowy girls of 
France — flashed by, and rows of the tremu- 
lous silver-leaved maple. Sometimes I saw 
rich bits of garden ground, gorgeous with 
geraniums and with many of the wild-flowers, 
neglected, for the most part, in other coun- 
tries, which the French know so well how 
to cultivate and train. In some fields the 
reapers were at work; in others women 
were guiding the plough ; in others the sleek 
cattle and shaggy sheep were couched in re- 
pose or busy with the herbage ; and through 
that smiling land the Seine flowed peacefully 
down, shining like burnished silver. At 
Eouen I saw the round tower and the spires 
of the famous cathedral — esteemed one of 
the best pieces of Gothic architecture in 
Europe ; and I thought of Corneille, who 
was there born, and of Joan of Arc, who 
was there burnt. Just beyond Rouen, on 



68 BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 

the east bank of the Seine, the hills take, 
and for many miles preserve, the shape of 
natural fortifications. Circuitous pathways 
wind up the faces of the crags. A chapel 
crowns one of the loftiest summits. Cottages 
nestle in the vales below. Gaunt windmills 
stretch forth then' arms, upon the distant 
hills. Every rood of the land is cultivated ; 
and there, as in England, the scarlet poppies 
brighten the green, while cosy hedgerows 
make the landscape comfortable to the fancy 
as well as pretty to the eye, with a sense of 
human companionship. 

In the gloaming we glided into Paris, and 
soon I was driving in the Champs Elysees 
and thinking of the Arabian Nights. No- 
body can know, without seeing them, how 
imperial the great features of Paris are. 
My first morning there was a Sunday, and 
it was made beautiful by sunshine, singing 
of birds, strains of music from passing 
bands, and the many sights and sounds 
which in every direction bespoke the cheer- 
fulness of the people. I went that day to 
a fete in the Bois de Vincennes, where from 
noon till midnight a great throng took its 
pleasure, in the most orderly, simple, child- 
like manner, and where I saw a ' ' picture 
in little" of the manners of the French. 



BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 69 

It was a peculiar pleasure while in Paris to 
rise at'an early hour and stroll through the 
markets of St. Honors, in which fxowers 
have an equal place with more substantial 
necessities of life, and where order and 
jieatness are perfect. It was impressive, 
also, to walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, 
in those lonely morning hours, and to muse 
over the downfall of the dynasty of Napo- 
leon. Those gardens, formerly the private 
grounds of the emperor, were open to the 
public ; and streams of labourers, clothed 
in blue blouses, poured through them every 
day. But little trace remained of the rav- 
ages of the Commune. The Arc de Triomphe 
stands, in solemn majesty ; the Column 
Vendome towers toward the sky ; the 
golden figure seems still in act of flight 
upon the top of the Column of the Bastile. 
I saw, in the church of Notre Dame, the 
garments — stained with blood and riddled 
with bullets — that were worn by the Arch- 
bishop of Paris, when he was murdered by 
the friends of Liberty, Equality, and Fra- 
ternity ; and I saw, with admiration, a 
panorama of the siege of Paris, by P. Phil- 
lipoteaux, which is a marvel of faithful 
detail, spirited composition, and the action 
and suffering of war. But those were all 



yo BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 

the tokens that I chanced to see of the evil 
days of France. 

The most interesting sights of Paris, to 
a stranger, are the objects associated with 
its older history. Every visitor repairs 
presently to Les Invalides to see the tomb 
of Napoleon Buonaparte. That structure 
would inspire awe even if it were not asso- 
ciated with that glittering name and that 
terrible memory. The gloom of the crypt 
in which it is sunk ; the sepulchral character 
of the mysterious, emblematic figures that 
surround it — " staring right on, with calm 
eternal eyes " ; the grandeur of the dome 
that rises above it ; and its own vast size 
and deathly shape — all those characteris- 
tics unite to make it a most impressive 
object, apart from the solemn sense that 
in the great, red-sandstone coffin rests, at 
last, after the stormiest of human lives, the 
ashes of the most vital man of action who 
has lived in modern times. Deeply impres- 
sive also are the tombs of Voltaire and 
Kousseau, in the crypt under the Pantheon. 
No device more apposite and significant 
could have been adopted than that which 
startles you on the front of Rousseau's 
tomb. The door stands ajar, and out of it 
issues an arm and hand, in marble, grasp- 



BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 7I 

ing a torch. It was almost as if the dead 
had spoken with a living voice, to see that 
fateful symbol of a power of thought and 
passion that never can die, while human 
hearts remain human. There is a fine 
statue of Voltaire in the vault that holds 
his tomb. Those mausoleums are merely 
commemorative. The body of Voltaire was 
destroyed with quicklime when laid in the 
grave, at the Abbey of Celleries, so that it 
might not be cast out of consecrated ground. 
Other tombs of departed greatness I found 
in Pere la Chaise. Moliere and La Fon- 
taine rest side by side. Racine is a neigh- 
bour to them. Talma, Auber, Rossini, De 
Musset, Desclee, and many other illus- 
trious names, may there be read, in the let- 
ters of death. Rachel's tomb is in the 
Hebrew quarter of the cemetery — a tall, 
narrow, stone structure, with a grated door, 
over which the name of Rachel is graven, 
in black letters. Looking through the grat- 
ing I saw a shelf on which were vases and 
flowers, and beneath it were fourteen im- 
mortelle wreaths. A few cards, left by 
pilgrims to that solemn shrine of genius 
and renown, were upon the floor, and I ven- 
tured to add my own, in humble reverence 
of genius, to the names which thus gave 



72 BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 

homage to the memory of a great actress ; 
and I gathered a few leaves from the shrub- 
bery that grows in front of her grave. The 
famous cemetery is comparatively destitute 
of flowers and grass. It contains a few 
avenues of trees, but for the most part it is 
a mass of ponderous tombs, crowded to- 
gether upon a hot hill-side, traversed by 
little stony pathways sweltering in sun and 
dust. No sadder graveyard was ever seen. 
All the acute anguish of remediless suffer- 
ing, all the abject misery and arid desola- 
tion of hopeless grief, is symbolised in that 
melancholy place. Artisans were repairing 
the tomb of Heloise and Abelard, and this, 
for a while, converted a bit of old romance 
to modern commonness. Still, I saw the 
tomb, and it was elevating to think that 
there may be " Words which are things, 
hopes which do not deceive." 

The most gorgeous modern building in 
Paris is the Opera House. No building in 
America can vie with it in ornate splendour. 
Some observers do but scant justice to the 
solid qualities in the French character. 
That character is mercurial, yet it contains 
elements of stupendous intensity and power; 
and this you feel, as perhaps you may never 
have felt it before, when you look at such 



BEAUTIES OF FKANCE. 73 

works as the Opera House, the Pantheon, 
the Madeleme, the Invalides, the Louvre, 
the Luxembourg-, and the miles of stone 
embankment that hem in the Seine on both 
its sides. The grandest old' building in 
Paris — also a living witness to French 
power and purpose — is the church of Notre 
Dame. It will not displace, in the affec- 
tionate reverence of Americans, the glory 
of Westminster Abbey ; but it will till al- 
most an equal place in their memory. Its 
arches are not so grand ; its associations are 
not so sacred. But it is exceedingly beau- 
tiful in forms and in simplicity, and no one 
can help loving it ; and by reason of its 
skilfully devised vistas it is perhaps in- 
vested with more of the alluring attribute 
of mystery. Some of its associations are 
especially impressive. You may there see 
the chapel in which Mary Stuart was mar- 
ried to her first husband, Francis II. of 
France, and in which Henry VI., of Eng- 
land, was crowned ; and you may stand on 
the spot on which Napoleon Buonaparte in- 
vested himself with the imperial diadem — 
which with his own hands he placed on his 
own head.i I climbed the tower of that 

1 Richard I. of England, at his first coronation, 
on September 3, 1189, in Westminster Abbey, took 



74 BEAUTIES OF FRANCE. 

famous cathedral and at the loftiest attain- 
able height pictured in fancy the awful 
closing scene of The Hunchback of Notre 
Dame. That romance seemed the truth 
then, and Claude Frollo, Esmeralda, and 
Quasimodo were as real as Richelieu. There 
is a vine growing near the bell-tower and 
some children were at play there, on the 
stone platform, I went in beneath the bell 
and smote upon it with a wooden mallet 
and heard with pleasure its rich, melodious, 
soulful music. The four hundred steps are 
well worn that lead to the tower of Notre 
Dame. There are few places on earth so 
fraught with memories ; few that so well 
repay the homage of a j)ilgrim from a foreign 
land. 

the crown from the altar and delivered it to the 
archbishop. In both cases the purpose was to sig- 
nify that the crown was not the gift of the church. 



ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 75 



VII. 
ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 

ELY, Cambridgeshire, September 6, 1891. 
— Gray and sombre London, gloomy 
beneath vast clouds of steel and bronze, is 
once more left behind. Old Highgate flits 
by and we roll through the network of little 
towns that fills all the space between Horn- 
sey and Tottenham. The country along our 
course is one of exceptional interest, and 
but that Buggins the Builder has marred it 
by making the houses alike it would be one 
of peculiar beauty. Around Tottenham the 
dwellings are interspersed with meadows 
and there are market-gardens and nurseries 
of flowers, — the bright green of carrot-tops 
and of the humble but portly cabbage being 
pleasantly relieved by masses of brilliant 
hollyhock. Broad fields ensue, — cultivated 
to the utmost and smiling with plenty; and 
around some of the houses are beautiful 
green lawns, divided with hedges of haw- 
thorn. The country, for the most part, is 



"J^ ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 

level, and a fine effect is produced upon the 
landscape by single tall trees or by isolated 
groups of them, — especially where the plain 
slopes gently toward gleaming rivulet and 
bird-haunted vale. Everywhere the aspect 
is that of prosperity and bloom. The sun 
has pierced the clouds and is faintly light- 
ing with a golden haze this shadowy sum- 
mer scene of loveliness and peace. In the 
distance are several small streams, dark, 
bright, and still, and near them many white 
and brown cattle, conspicuous in a sudden 
burst of sunshine, are couched under the 
trees. A little canal-boat, gayly painted 
red and green, winds slowly through the 
plain, and over the harvest fields the omni- 
present rook wings his solemn flight or 
perches on the yellow sheaves. Chingford 
has been left to the east, — where you may 
explore one of the most picturesque ruined 
churches in this country, and where they 
show you a hunting-lodge that once was 
owned and used by Queen Elizabeth, — and 
Enfield has been left to the west where 
the nettles grow rank on the low grave of 
Charles Lamb, within the shadow of the 
grim church-tower that reverberated with 
his funeral knell. White Webs has been 
passed, with its associations of Father Gar- 



ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 'J'] 

net and the Gunpowder Plot, and passed 
also is Ponder\s End, with its relics and 
memories of the baleful Judge Jeffreys. 
At Rye House the pilgrim remembers the 
plan that was hatched there to murder 
Charles II., and thinks of the miserable 
death of Lord William Russell upon the 
block in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Bishop's 
Stortford brings thoughts of the cruel 
Bishop Bonner. But the beauty of nature 
triumphs over the depravity of man, and 
nowhere in this verdant and blooming re- 
gion is there any hint of a wicked heart or 
a sinister action. 

The church at Bishop's Stortford crowns 
a fine eminence and near that place an old 
brick windmill and many black cattle make 
a striking picture in the gentle landscape. 
The pretty villages of Stanstead and Elsen- 
ham glide by, and the wanderer's gaze, 
as they pass, rests dreamily on tiny red 
cottages with lichened roofs and on the 
broad, fertile farms that surround them. 
Between Audley End and Cambridge there 
is a long stretch of country that contains 
only farms and villages, — the cultivation 
of the land being thorough and perfect and 
the result a picture of contentment and 
repose. Presently the region grows more 



78 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 

hilly and under clouds of steel and silver 
the landscape is swept by a cool, fragrant 
wind, bringing dashes of sudden rain. 
Hedges are abundant. Many flocks of 
sheep are seen in the pastures. Fine farm- 
houses appear and many signs of opulence 
are all around them. Wooden windmills 
rise picturesque upon the heights, and the 
eye rests delightedly on long rows of the 
graceful Lombardy poplar. White roads 
are visible, here and there, winding away 
into the distance, and many kinds of trees 
abound ; yet everywhere there is an ample 
prospect. At Shelf ord comes a burst of 
sunshine, and looking toward the horizon I 
see tall trees that stand like sentinels around 
the lovely plain of classic Cambridge, — 
where soon I am to wander among such 
stately haunts of learning as will fire the 
imagination and fill the memory forever 
with shapes and scenes and thoughts of 
majesty and glory that words are powerless 
to tell. But the aspect of Cambridge, as 
we glide now along its margin, gives no 
hint of the overwhelming magnificence 
within its borders. Beyond it, still flying 
northward, we traverse a flat country and 
see the long roads bowered with trees, the 
deep emerald verdure, the banks of white 



ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 79 

daisies and red clover, tlie gardens brilliant 
witli scarlet-runners, sunflowers, and mari- 
golds, the rooks at their customary occupa- 
tion of feeding, — provident, vigilant, saga- 
cious, and wonderfully humorous, — the 
artistic forms of the hay-ricks, some circu- 
lar, some cone-shaped, some square with 
bevelled edges, and in the long, yellow fields 
the mowers at their work, some swinging 
their scythes and some pausing to rest. 
These and others like them are the labourers 
whose slow and patient toil, under guidance 
of a wise and refined taste, has gradually 
transformed almost all England into a gar- 
den of beauty and delight — for in every 
part of this country industry is incessant, 
and hand in hand with industry goes thrift. 
A vast gray tower rising superbly out of 
a dense mass of green and glistening foliage, 
a gray spire near at hand, visible amid a 
cluster of red and wrinkled roofs, and over 
all a flood of sunshine — and this is Ely ! 
I had not been an hour in the town before 
I had climbed to the summit of the western 
tower of the cathedral, and gazed out upon 
the green and golden plains of Cambridge- 
shire, Suffolk, and Northampton, lit by the 
afternoon sun and blazing with light and 
colour for thirty miles around. Far to the 



80 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 

northwest you may just discern the black 
tower of Peterborough. North and east, 
at a still greater distance, a dim gray shape 
reveals the ramparts of Norwich. Thirty 
miles northward rise the spires of Lynn. 
You cannot see them, but the wash of the 
North sea breaks in music on that delicious 
coast, and the strong ocean breeze, sweep- 
ing over the moors and fens, cools the 
whole land and stirs its sun-lit foliage till 
it seems to sparkle with joyous motion. 
The Ouse i winds through the plain, at some 
distance, south and east, — dark and shin- 
ing in the glow of the autumn afternoon, — 
while, gliding between hedges in the west 
and south, come little railway trains from 
Cambridge and Saint Ives. Nearer, far 
below, and nestling around the great 
church are the cosy dwellings of the clean 
and quiet town — one of the neatest, most 
orderly, most characteristic towns in Eng- 

1 This river, and not the Ouse that flows through 
York, is Cowper's " Ouse, slow-winding through its 
level plain." That poet's life (1731-1800) is asso- 
ciated with Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, where 
he was born; Huntingdon and Olney, in Bucking- 
hamshire — both on the Ouse; Weston, in North- 
amptonshire; and Dereham, in Norfolk, where be 
died. His ashes rest in the parish church of Dere- 
ham, 



ELY AND ITS CATHP:DRAL. 51 

land. Houses, streets, and trees commingle 
in the picture, and you discern that the 
streets are irregular and full of pleasing 
curves, the buildings being mostly made 
of light gray or tawny yellow brick, and 
roofed with slate or with brown tiles that 
the action of the weather has curiously 
wrinkled and the damp has marked with 
lichen and moss. At this dizzy height you 
are looking down even upon that colossal 
octagon tower, the famous lantern of Ely 
(built by Prior Alan de Walsingham, a 
little after 1322), which is one of the mar- 
vels of ecclesiastical architecture" through- 
out the world. It is a prospect at once of 
extraordinary rural sweetness, religious 
pomp, and august and solemn antiquity. 
It is a pageant of superb modern civilisa- 
tion and refinement, and yet, as you gaze 
upon it, you forget all that is contempo- 
rary and present, and seem to be standing 
among the phantom shapes and in the 
haunted cloisters of the Middle Ages. 

Each of the great abbeys of England has 
its distinctive character. The beauty of 
Ely is originality combined with magnifi- 
cence. That cathedral is not only glorious ; 
it is also strange. The colossal porch, the 
stupendous tower, the long nave wdth its 

F 



82 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 

marvellous painted ceiling, the vast central 
octagon, the uncommon size and the un- 
usual position of the Lady chapel, the mas- 
sive buttresses, the delicate yet robust 
beauty of the flanking turrets, the w^ealth 
of carved niches and pinnacles — all those 
elements of splendour unite to dazzle the 
vision and overwhelm the soul. Inside the 
church there is nothing to obstruct your 
view of it from end to end ; the Gothic 
architecture is not overladen, as in so many 
other cathedrals in Europe, with inharmo- 
nious Grecian monuments ; and when you 
are permitted to sit there, in the stillness, 
with no sound of a human voice and no 
purl of ecclesiastical prattle to call you 
back to earth, you must indeed be hard to 
impress if your thoughts are not centred 
upon heaven. It is the little preacher in 
his ridiculous vestments, it is man with his 
vanity and folly, that humiliates the rever- 
ent pilgrim in such holy places as this, by 
his insistent contrast of his own conven- 
tional littleness with all that is celestial in 
the grandest architectural results of the 
inspiration of genius. Alas, and again 
Alas ! When I remember what glorious 
places have been almost ruined for me 
by inveterate human gabble I know not 



ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 83 

whether the sentiment that predominates 
is resentment or despair. But for every 
true worshipper the moment of solitude 
comes, and with it comes tlie benediction 
of beauty. During some part of last night 
I stood at my window, in the Lamb, and 
looked at the great cathedral, silent and 
sombre under the cold light of the stars. 
The wind was blowing, fresh and strong. 
The streets were deserted. The lights had 
been put out and the people had gone to 
rest. But it did not seem that the ancient 
church is a dead thing, or that slumber 
ever comes to it, or weakness, or forgetful- 
ness, or repose. It keeps an eternal vigil, 
watchful over the earth and silently com- 
muning with heaven ; and as I gazed up- 
ward at its fretted battlements I could 
almost see the wings of angels waving in 
the midnight air. 

It is early morning now, and across a 
lovely blue sky float thin clouds of snowy 
fleece, while many rooks soar above the 
lofty towers of Ely, darting into crevices 
in its gray crown, or settling upon its para- 
pets, with many a hoarse and querulous 
croak. The little town has not yet awak- 
ened. Nothing is stirring except a few 
dead leaves that the wind has blown down 



84 ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 

over night, and tliat are now wildly whirled 
along the white, hard, cleanly streets. The 
level on which this ancient settlement 
rests is so even and so extensive that 
from almost any elevation you can see 
the tree-line on the distant horizon. Some 
of the houses have doors and shutters of 
yellow oak. The narrow causeways are 
paved with smooth gray stone or slate. Not 
many lattices or gables are visible, such as 
one sees so often in Canterbury and Win- 
chester, nor is there in all Ely such a 
romantic street as the exquisite Vicar's 
Close, at Wells ; but bits of old monastic 
architecture are numerous, — arched gate- 
ways fretted by time, shields of stone, 
carved entablatures, and broken gargoyles, 
— curiously commingled with the cottage 
ornamentation of a more modern day. On 
the long village- green in front of the cathe- 
dral stands a handsome piece of ordnance 
that was captured at Sebastopol — peace- 
ful enough now, before the temple of the 
Prince of Peace. A little way off rises 
the spire of St. Mary's, a- gray relic of 
the thirteenth century, remarkable for its 
door-arches of blended Norman and early 
English art. Close at hand is the venerable 
Tudor palace, which for more than four 



ELY AND ITS CATHEDRAL. 85 

centuries has been inhabited by the bishops 
of Ely, and upon some part of which may 
have rested the gaze of that astute states- 
man, Bishop Morton, who "fled to Ricli- 
mond," and whose defection wrought the 
political ruin of Richard III. Every way 
you turn and everywhere you ramble there 
is something to inspire historic memories 
or awaken impressive thought. Just as 
Glastonbury, upon the golden plain of Som- 
erset, was once the Isle of Avalon, so this 
place, lonely among the fens of Eastern 
Anglia, was once the Isle of Ely. It is 
more than twelve hundred years since the 
resolute devotion of a chaste and noble 
woman made this a sacred spot ; and if 
storied Ely taught no other lesson and gave 
no other comfort it would at least, — as the 
commemorative monument to the Saxon 
princess Ethelryth, — admonish us that life 
is capable of higher things than mortal 
love, and that the most celestial of women 
is the woman who is sufficient unto her- 
self. 



FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 



VIII. 
PROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 

INVERNESS, September 22, 1891.— The 
Pentland Hills vanish to the southward, 
under clouds of pale blue steel, through 
which the silver globe of the morning sun 
strives vainly to break its way, casting a dim 
gray twilight over the wide green landscape 
and adding to its beauty by fine contrast of 
colour. The tide is out, as we cross the 
Forth bridge, and many boats are aground 
upon the sands beneath it ; but many ves- 
sels, including a trim ship of war, are at 
anchor in the stream, and the graceful stone 
piers, the gray villages on the banks of 
Eorth, and the miniature lighthouses on the 
little rocks along its channel make the same 
lovely picture as of old. The water, much 
beaten by the equinoctial rain of the last 
two or three days, is smooth and of a sul- 
len brown. A cool wind is blowing, and 
birds are on the wing. Soon the sunshine 
grows stronger and upon the emerald hills 



FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 87 

and plains around Dunfermline there are 
exquisite effects of golden light and passing 
shadow. The old church-tower shows grand 
beneath a wild sky, and in our fitful glimpse 
of it we think of the grand life that it com- 
memorates, and revere the good Queen 
Margaret whose grave was made at its 
base. On many hill-sides around this an- 
cient city are sheaves of the harvest, and 
we note the calm, self-absorbed cattle, 
grazing in the wet meadows. The clouds 
that had dispersed grow suddenly dense, 
but shafts of sunlight linger continually on 
the high summits of the bleak, distant hills, 
and presently the blue of heaven shines 
through great rifts in the sullen sky, and 
all nature seems to be rejoicing after the 
storm. The burnies, which are full to over- 
flowing, rush gayly on their course and 
murmur and sparkle as they speed. Scores 
of sheep couch in the pastures, — the placid 
images of innocent content. Loch Leven 
is revealed to us, — its wide, gray water 
gleaming in the fitful sun, — and as we 
gaze upon its island and upon the little 
dark town that is nestled on its shore, our 
thoughts fly away to the remote days of 
Mary Stuart, and we see her midnight flit- 
ting across the stormy waves, and muse 



88 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 

once more upon the fascination of tliat im- 
perial nature, victorious over so many noble 
souls, and now, at the distance of more 
than three centuries, still vital and still 
triumphant. Toward Perth the country 
grows more hilly and rocky, and we traverse 
tunnels and roll through deep ravines that 
are densely clad with the beautiful Scotch 
fir. Upon the more distant hills there are 
copses, which have an aristocratic effect of 
studied refinement, while numerous sheep, 
reposing amid the dark green broom, show 
upon the landscape like little balls of white 
wool. Down in the lowlands are haystacks 
shaped like ancient towers — one sign, 
among many others, of the manner in 
which the fonns of the Middle Ages have 
affected the taste of to-day. Perth itself 
lies couched in a green glen, with lovely 
wooded hills around it, and as we enter its 
beautiful valley the sky is a dome of almost 
cloudless blue, flooded with golden light. 
Northward a brown -red castle rises stately 
among the trees, and soon we see the glis- 
tening water of the superb Tay winding- 
through the most opulent meadows of Scot- 
land. Never could memory lose such a pic- 
ture, — the brilliant green of the fields ; 
the patches of red clover ; the beds of mari- 



FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 89 

gold ; the purple of heather ; the wild lux- 
uriance of the bracken ; the vine-clad stone 
walls ; the groves of poplar, larch, oak, and 
pine ; the thick-leaved boughs tossing, and 
the many- coloured flowers trembling, in a 
cold, brisk wind ; the constantly changing 
outlines of the distant hills ; and, over all, 
the benediction of the golden sun. This 
part of Scotland is as finely cultivated as 
the best of England, and similar to it, — 
and sometimes superior to it, — in effect of 
opulence and beauty. 

Eor a long distance after leaving. Perth 
our course is through a fertile valley. The 
sun lies warm upon it and the vegetation is 
very rich. No observer could fail to notice, 
in that region, the splendid effect of sun- 
shine glinting through the trees — the foliage 
ilhiminated and glowing as if with internal 
light. In a little while we come to Dunkeld, 
and then presently to Dalguise. It is a 
lonely country, — but all the lovelier for its 
loneliness. The encircling hills are craggy 
and gaunt rocks stare through the trees. 
There is a wealth of woods, of remarkable 
variety, and many pretty roads wind away 
and are lost in them. The bushes are cov- 
ered with hips and haws. The dark stream 
of Tummel shines in a deep ravine. Pine 



90 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS, 

forests begin to crown the hills, and our gaze 
lingers pleased upon little shielings of gray 
stone, nestled in the sheltered dells. "We 
are coming to Pitlochrie now, which is one 
of the loveliest places in the Highlands, and 
to that famous Pass of Killiecrankie, through 
which, in a frenzy of panic, the broken and 
bleeding ranks of the English fled from the 
victorious Highlanders of Dundee. The 
houses of Pitlochrie, made of gray stone and 
rising amid groves of birch and Scotch fir, 
are blazing with roses and with the brilliant 
purple shields of the clematis, and around 
them the crisp air is honeyed with the balmy 
fragrance of the pine. The Tummel and the 
Garry commingle here ; the scenery blends 
rugged grandeur with tranquil refinement ; 
and surely it may be said that few spots in 
Great Britain are lovelier than this one. A 
glowing autumn sun pours its flood of crystal 
light upon the wild Pass of Killiecrankie and 
the narrow rapid stream in the depth of the 
verdurous mountain gorge is burning with 
the lustre of a river of diamonds. Every 
element of great scenery, — excepting the 
American element of great size, — may be 
seen at Killiecrankie, and from there to 
Blair- Athole. They have marked with a 
memorial stone the place, upon the battle- 



FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 9I 

field, where the victorious Claverliouse fell, 
— a mighty spirit ; a hero equally of history 
and romance ; a great soldier ; perhaps, after 
Montrose, the greatest soldier that Scotland 
has ever known. Our thoughts are full of 
him as we rush through this wild and glo- 
rious region of his last battle, his brilliant 
victory, and his triumphant death. Ended 
long ago was that unavailing strife — that 
useless, pathetic waste of valour and vigour 
and blood. Nothing but an epitaph remains 
to tell of it. But genius can hallow what- 
ever it touches ; and as long as the stars 
hold their courses in the heavens this grand 
mountain pass and haunted glen will keep 
the hallowed memory of the great Marquis 
of Dundee. Scant pause is allowed for rev- 
erie. The great are gone — but the sun 
shines and the roses bloom, and if we would 
see them at all we must see them now. 
When Dundee fought his battle it was a 
scene of wildness and of gloom. It is a 
scene of bloom and beauty to-day. The 
hills around Tummel and Garry are yellow 
with hay-fields, and in the levels below there 
are thick-fleeced sheep, and sleek cattle, 
and graceful hayricks, and clumps of firs. 
Blair-Athole sleeps in a vale of sunshine, 
and around it, far away, rise the bold bare 



92 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 

peaks of the mountains that are Scotland's 
glory and pride. As the pageant lessens 
you see a vast range of wooded acclivity on 
the east and the river Tummel on the west, 
flowing at the base of brown and barren 
crags. Throughout this region the archi- 
tecture of the gray stone houses is charac- 
teristic and superior ; and if it lacks the 
repose of the English rural village it pos- 
sesses a blending of solidity and piquancy 
all its own. The cone-pointed turret often 
rises among the trees, and the Tudor porch, 
covered with late roses, gleams forth from 
groves of ■ fir ; and everywhere there are 
shapes and objects of beauty — the rowan- 
tree, blooming and brilliant with its clusters 
of red berries ; the blazing purple of the 
heather-clad hills ; the fantastically figured 
groups of wandering sheep; the brown, 
transparent water of the rapid stream, — 
at intervals suddenly broken into a tumult 
of silver foam ; and, far away, a faint, deli- 
cate, blue mist upon mountain peaks that 
seem to tower into heaven. 

North of the Forest of Athole now — and 
our track is through a land of rock and 
heather, with not one tree to give it shade 
and with no creature stirring but an occa- 
sional sheep. For miles and miles we look 



FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 93 

on nothing but lonely lieath, extending up 
the long mountain slopes on either hand, 
desolate beneath the clear sunshine of a 
September day. A solitary human being 
is walking over the moor, and the dreary 
waste grows drearier still, as our gaze rests 
upon his dark figure and sees it fade away. 
Soon we catch a momentary glimpse of 
Loch Ericht, — the highest of the Scotch 
lochs and reputed its gloomiest, — and grim 
and gaunt enough it is, beneath the autum- 
nal sky, which even now has begun to 
lower with the remote approach of night. 
Around us, at distance, the outline of the 
hills is much broken, — range beyond range 
of swart and grisly mountains rising upon 
all sides and filling the prospect. We are 
in the valley of the Spey and are traversing 
the depth of Glen Truim. A backward 
look through the hill-gap sees the whole 
wild landscape under a semi-dome of silver. 
Presently the glen becomes wooded ; abodes 
of man appear ; hundreds of sheep are visi- 
ble upon the moors ; the mountain-peaks 
are nearer and the mists creep down upon 
them and swathe them in a silver fieece ; 
while a few birds (the first that we have 
seen for hours) fly low in the glen. There 
is a noble view of the Spey, whose broad, 



94 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 

black water, flowing beneath the three 
arches of the bridge of Newtonmore, glis- 
tens like ebony in the morning light. At 
Kingussie we view a sumptuous fir-grove 
and a ruined castle, and we are entranced 
with the lovely effect of sunshine falling 
here and there, from behind black clouds, 
on hills that otherwise are lapt in shadow 
and in mist. The landscape now is won- 
derfully various — a splendid breadth of 
valley bordered with young firs and teeming 
with dense foliage and with great masses 
of purple heather. The village of Kincraig 
is here — a gem to be remembered and 
revisited — and sweet Loch Ellen is not 
distant. We note the sharp and sudden 
contrast of fir-groves with barren, deso- 
late, rock-strewn hill-side. A lonely cabin 
sweeps into view and a woman at the door 
pensively looks at us as we pass. Loch 
Inch is eastward from our track ; Loch 
Alvie westward. Yonder, upon a spur of 
the mountain, is a monument to the Duke 
of Gordon. There, to the northeast, rises 
in a faint blue cloud the mysterious Cairn- 
gorm mountain — which surely never looked 
more beautiful than now. At Aviemore 
the clouds lower and the mist is on the 
hills, but in the sky behind them there is 



FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 95 

a streak of silver. Miles of moorland suc- 
ceed. The sky darkens. The wind is chill. 
The country is very lonely. If human 
beings are here they make but little sign 
of their presence. One lov^ cabin we do 
indeed discern, — a mantle of green velvet 
moss upon its roof and many hens roosted 
on its window-sills in disconsolate medita- 
tion. The river Spey, broad and lovely, 
flows through this plain, and as far as the 
eye can reach its gaze lingers lovingly upon 
dense masses of dark green broom, among 
which, erect or couched, are the big and 
stately black cattle of the North. Fine 
gleams of sunshine fall suddenly, now and 
then, out of the gray sky, and rifts of won- 
derfully brilliant blue shine through the 
sombre rack of the storm. More and more 
we delight in the burnies that gleam like 
threads of silver on the hill-sides and bicker 
into foam and music as they come dashing 
through the plain. The clouds threaten 
but the landscape smiles. Near at hand 
is shadow, but far away the sunshine falls 
upon a yellow field amid the blue-green of 
the fir-trees and seems to make a glory over 
half the visible world. 

It is the land of Macbeth through which 
we have been speeding, — "from Eife, 



96 FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 

great king, ' ' — and at many a place upon 
those desolate, rock-strewn moors of peat 
and heather the Shakespeare-lover has 
seen the "blasted heath," the storm-clouds 
hanging low, fantastic masses of mist drift- 
ing over the wet earth, Macbeth and Ban- 
quo with their marching forces, and the 
dim shapes of the three Weird Sisters glid- 
ing upon the haunted air. It was toward 
Forres that the victors were making, on 
that day of destiny when first the deadly 
purpose in the heart of Macbeth took form 
and voice in the evil angels who thencefor- 
ward were to lead him to his doom. We 
make toward Forres now. The sun, be- 
neath dark clouds in the west, is sending 
down shafts of light upon a fertile valley, 
the harvest in sheaves, the yellow fields of 
oats, the cattle in pasture and the sheep in 
fold ; while the cold wind, sweeping over a 
woodland of birch and fir, is sweeter than 
honey, Forres next — a cleanly stone town 
with a cone-capped tower in the middle 
of it ; a place that is ample in popula- 
tion, active in enterprise, and abundantly 
possessed of the rewards of industry and 
thrift. At Brodie, looking across harvest 
fields and a low growth of firs, we see the 
glimmer of gray and leaden water and so 



FROM EDINBURGH TO INVERNESS. 97 

catch our first glimpse of the Moray Firth, 
A little while, and we look upon the fine 
gray spires of Nairn, and see the Moray 
like a narrowing river, and beyond it the 
bald, round mountains of Caithness, range 
beyond range, disappearing in the angry 
northern sky. Westward a narrow water- 
fall of light, falling from a dense bank of 
slate-coloured clouds, illumines a little 
river, the garments that are bleaching on 
the copious bushes of the broom, the level 
lands of peat and heather, and the hard, 
white roads that wind away toward Dal- 
cross and Culloden. A mighty flock of sea- 
mews momentarily darkens the air, and we 
can hear their quick, sharp cries, and 
almost the whirring rustle of their innumer- 
able wings. The day is done, — a long and 
lovely day of poetic pageant and unalloyed 
delight, — and just as streaks of gold under 
layers of blue and lead declare the sunset 
we see the gray battlements and towers of 
our desired haven, and glide to our rest in 
the bosom of Inverness. 

G 



98 THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 



IX. 



THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 

}^ASTWARD from Inverness, on the way 
-^ to CuUoden, the road at first skirts the 
southern shore of the Moray Firth, and the 
traveller driving on it sees a broad reach of 
shining water over which the sea-mews sport, 
and beyond it the bleak hills of Caithness, 
sleeping solitary in the sun. Soon the 
track bends southerly and then east again, 
and finally, passing beneath an arch of 
sumptuous beeches, it climbs the long 
hill-slope toward Drummossie Moor. The 
hedges on both its sides are filled with hips 
and haws and with the lovely blue-bells of 
Scotland, and from many a neighbouring 
glade of fir and birch sounds the clear, 
delicious call of the throstle, — turning the 
crisp air to music and filling the heart with 
grateful joy that this world should be so 
beautiful. Yonder on the hill is a massive 
gray tower, venerable with antiquity and 
stained as only time could stain it with the 



THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 99 

moss and lichen of age. Near at hand is 
the more humble dwelling of a cottager — 
decked with clematis and marigold. A sin- 
gle rook, poised upon the extreme topmost 
spike of a tall pine-tree, looks down upon 
the wide green fields, thick sewn with yel- 
low flowers of the colt's-foot, and croaks 
with comfort. The warm sun is riding 
high in the cloudless blue of heaven and 
every wind is hushed. I could not have 
found a day of greater peace in which to 
gaze on a most desolate and pathetic scene 
of buried war. The first intimation that 
you receive of the battlefield is a gray rock 
at the roadside, directing attention to a 
couple of stone cottages in the adjacent 
field, — mscribed with the words, " King's 
stables : station of the English cavalry, after 
the battle of Culloden." The immediate 
approach to the centre of the field is made 
through a grove of pine-trees, with which 
Duncan Forbes, Laird of Culloden, — gen- 
erously considerate of a cause to which his 
famous ancestor. Lord President Forbes, 
was inveterately hostile, — has caused it to 
be surrounded. You reach it almost before 
you are aware of its presence, and your 
heart must be hard indeed if you can look 
upon it without emotion. No spot that ever 



lOO THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 

I have seen so melts the soul with desola- 
tion and awe. I had been told that there 
is but little at Culloden ; and in the sense 
of mere prose this may be true. There is a 
large oval grassy plain, thickly strewn with 
small stones. On one side of it there is a 
lofty circular cairn. On the other side 
there is an irregular line of low, rough 
rocks, to mark the sepulchres of the clans 
that died in this place, — brave victims of a 
merciless massacre, heroic realities of loyal 
love, vainly sacrificed for a dubious cause 
and a weak leader. That is all. But to the 
eyes of the spirit that lonely moorland, — ■ 
once populous with heroes, now filled with 
their mouldering bones, — is forever hal- 
lowed and glorious with the pageant of 
moral valour, the devotion and the grandeur 
and the fearless fidelity of men who were 
content to perish for what they loved. I 
stood there a long time, in humble medita- 
tion. The faint white ghost of the half- 
moon was visible in the western sky and 
the place was so still that I could hear the 
buzzing of flies in the air. No voice broke 
the sacred silence, and from the neighbour- 
ing grove of pines no whisper floated — 
though at a distance I could see their pen- 
dant tassels just swayed, and nothing more, 



THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 10 1 

by the gentle autumn wind. Words have 
their power ; but it is not in the power of 
any words of mine to paint the noble solem- 
nity of that scene or to express the sublimity 
of its spirit. 

The battle of Culloden was an unequal 
battle, and the issue of it seems to have 
been for only a few moments in doubt. 
The Highlanders — weakened by hunger 
and want of sleep, wearied by a long and 
useless night-march, and most unfit for 
battle — were largely outnumbered. The 
English artillery, strongly placed on a long 
ridge of the moor, mowed them like stubble. 
They swarmed from the hills on the west 
and the south ; but in the face of the Eng- 
lish batteries their impetuosity was their 
ruin. Their first charge did indeed break the 
left wing of the first of the three English lines 
that had been arrayed against them ; and if 
the Macdonalds had reinforced that charge 
the final result might have been different ; 
but the Macdonalds had been denied the 
place of honour, and they refused to lift a 
hand. It is an old story now. The Duke 
of Cumberland had commanded that no life 
should be spared, and when the massacre 
began men were shot down in droves. One 
spot on the moor is marked ' ' The Well of 



102 THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 

the Dead." There the slaughter was fiercest 
and bloodiest. The Chief of the Magillivray 
fell there, and the rude lettering on that 
rough rock commemorates one of the bravest 
men that ever met a foe. No attempt has 
been made at epitaph or mortuary recital- 
Each rock of sepulchre bears simply the 
name of the clan that was buried around 
and beneath it, — Clan Fraser, Clan Mackin- 
tosh, Clan Cameron, Clan Stuart of Alpin, 
Clans Macgillivray, Maclean, and Maclach- 
lan, and the Athole Highlanders, — those, 
with the Mixed Clans, make up this roll of 
honour, that neither change nor detraction 
can tarnish nor time forget. 

The Cairn of Culloden, erected in 1858, 
suits the place as no other form of monu- 
ment could suit it. Rugged truth and 
homely simplicity are its characteristic at- 
tributes. It is a circular tower, about thirty 
feet high and about ten feet in diameter. 
It consists of twelve rows of heavy, irregular 
stones, laid without mortar, but welded 
with layers of slate. Upon the corner- 
stone, at the south side, is sculptured the 
commemorative record : "culloden. 1746. 
E. p. FECIT. 1858." The top is flat, and on 
it is a wild growth of flowers and grass. 
A tall slab, set at the base of its east front 



THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. IO3 

and protected by an iron grill of pointed 
shafts, bears this inscription : 

THE BATTLE 

OF CULLODEN 

WAS FOUGHT ON THIS MOOR 

16th APRIL, 1746. 

THE GRAVES OF THE 

GALLANT HIGHLANDERS 

WHO FOUGHT FOR 

SCOTLAND AND PRINCE CHARLIE 

ARE MARKED BY THE NAMES 

OF THEIR CLANS. 

Drummossie Moor extends for about six 
miles along this region. It was vacant and 
treeless in the wild days of the Pretender, 
but in later times some of it has been cul- 
tivated and much of it has been reclaimed 
and inclosed for pasture land. In a meadow 
east of the cairn, called "The Field of the 
English," are buried the soldiers of Cum- 
berland who perished in that terrible fight. 
Still further east, and at a point that com- 
mands a comprehensive, magnificent view 
of the moor, the valley, and the southern 
hills beyond it, stands a large, almost flat 
rock, marking the position of the Duke of 
Cumberland on the day of the battle — and 
now inscribed with his execrated name. 



I04 THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 

Upon that rock you may climb, and as you 
stand there and gaze over the green, heather- 
spangled waste, — seeing no motion any- 
where save of a wandering sheep or a drift- 
ing cloud, and hearing no sound except the 
occasional cawing of a distant rook, — your 
imagination will conjure up the scene of that 
tremendous onset and awful carnage in 
which the last hope of the Stuart was 
broken and the star of his destiny went 
down forever. Here floated the royal 
standard of England and here were ranged 
her serried cohorts and her shining guns. 
There, on the hill-slopes, flashed the ban- 
ners of the Highland clans. Everywhere 
this placid moor — now brown and purple 
in the slumberous autumn light — was bril- 
liant with the scarlet and the tartan and 
with the burnished steel of naked weapons 
gleaming under the April sky. Drums 
rolled and trumpets blared and the boom 
of cannon mingled in horrid discord with 
the wild screech of bagpipes and the fierce 
Highland yell ; and so the intrepid followers 
of Eoyal Charlie rushed onward to their 
death. The world knows well enough now 
— seeing what he became, and in what man- 
ner he lived and died — that he was un- 
worthy of the love that followed him and of 



THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. I05 

the blood that was shed m his cause. The 
student of politics may wisely instruct us 
now that a victory at Culloden for the House 
of Stuart might have meant the restoration 
of the Roman Catholic church to its old su- 
premacy over Great Britain, and thus might 
have set back the kingdom to the iron 
days of Henry VII. But when Culloden 
was fought Charles Edward Stuart was 
still, in Scottish minds, the gallant young 
prince unjustly kept from his own, and the 
clans of Scotland, never yet pledged to the 
Union, were rallied around their rightful 
king. Both democracy and religion may 
exult now, that the Duke of Cumberland 
was the victor ; but, standing on that grave 
of valour, with every voice of romance 
whispering at his heart, the sympathy of 
the pilgrim is with the prince that was a 
fugitive, the cause that was lost, and the 
heroes who died for it — and died in vain. 
I thought of Campbell's great poem of 
LochieVs Warning, — which first fired my 
heart when I was a schoolboy, — and as I 
recalled its full and fervid lines I was con- 
firmed in the conviction that not in any lan- 
guage among men was there ever achieved 
a more eloquent, passionate, sublime, and 
therefore altogether poetic commemoration 



I06 THE FIELD OF CULLODEN. 

of a great national event. To think of it 
there was to place upon knowledge the crown 
of inspiration ; and to have had the privi- 
lege of recalling it amid the scene which it 
portrays will be a cause for gratitude as 
long as I live. 

Note. — The position occupied by Charles 
Edward at the battle was under a tree, still 
called Prince Charlie's Tree. Culloden House, 
the manor of Lord President Forbes, stands a 
mile north of the moor. On the top of the 
Cumberland Rock I made the acquaintance of 
H. H. Drake, LL.D., the venerable author of 
the History of the Hundred of Blackheath, 
who chanced to be sitting there. At Inverness 
I spoke with Mr. Joseph Clegg, a bookseller, 
who said he had known a very old inhabitant 
who had pointed out, upon Drummossie Moor, 
the exact burial-place of Keppoch, the gigan- 
tic chief of the Macdonalds, who fell while 
vainly virgiug his discontented followers into 
action. That spot the veteran remembered, 
because, when a youth, it had been shown to 
him by his father, a survivor of Culloden 
fight : and persons digging there found the 
bones of a very large man. The stones that 
mark the sepulchres of the several clans were 
erected by Duncan Forbes, Esq., in 1881. 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. lOj 



I 



X. 

STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

ONA, IN THE Hebrides, September 30, 
1891. _ The wanderer who lands upon 
the little stone ledge, partly natural and 
partly artificial, that serves for a pier at 
lona should be prepared to remain upon 
that island not simply as long as he likes 
but as long as he must. In the Hebrides 
the weather is the sovereign; and never 
was there a sovereign more arbitrary, capri- 
cious, imperious, and potential. The poet 
Longfellow, always felicitous in his choice 
of epithets, never chose an adjective more 
fitly than when he designated the western 
islands of Scotland "the tempest-haunted 
Hebrides." At any moment the storm- 
wind may sweep over them. At almost 
any moment it may cease to blow. It seems 
to know not any law except its own caprice. 
When the tempest has spent its fury the 
calm that reigns there is the calm of Para- 
dise ; but while the tempest rages no sail 



Io8 STOKM-BOUND IN lONA. 

can brave the blast that beats those waters 
and no boat ever dreams of making for that 
perilous shore. The present pilgrim landed 
at lona about noon on September 25, in- 
tending to return to Oban the next morn- 
ing. Five days have passed, and there is 
but a faint prospect of his escape. Postal 
communication with the mainland — regu- 
larly occurrent but once every forty- eight 
hours in fair weather — has practically 
ceased. Telegraphic communication does 
not exist. If MacBrayne's steamer, the 
gallant and sturdy Grenadier^ should come 
there will be a rescue. If not there must 
be a protracted exercise of the virtue of 
patience. Resting, however, in such a 
home-like haven as the St. Columba hotel, 
and cheered by companionship with the 
kind Highland hearts who dwell there, 
the practice of patience should not be 
difficult. 

It was neither coarse weather nor fine 
when we sailed out of Oban. The sky was 
a dome of steel and the morning sun, be- 
neath half-transparent clouds, was a disc 
of silver. At one point the sunrise splen- 
dour pierced its sullen veil and followed us 
with a diamond shaft of light. The wind 
was fresh ; the sea lively ; and now and 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. I09 

then there came a dash of rain. North- 
ward we saw the ruined tower of Dunolly, 
thick hung with ivy, and the black stone 
upon the coast to which, as legend loves to 
tell, King Fingal chained his dog. Far up 
Loch Linnhe rose the huge back of Ben 
Nevis, encumbered with sombre cloud. 
More near, upon the right hand, glistened 
the wet rocks of gray and lonely Lismore ; 
while upon the left frowned the iron 
shore of Mull. Upon the heights of Mull 
shone the purple of heather and the rich 
emerald of velvet turf. The lighthouse 
tower upon Lismore stood out in bold re- 
lief against the sky, and over the furtive 
rock where Maclean of Duart bound fair 
Ellen of Lorn and left her to perish the 
waves were breaking in wreaths of snowy 
foam. All around were flights of sea-mews, 
and we could see, in passing, upon the wide 
ascending moors of Mull, the scattered gray 
stone cottages and the cattle and sheep 
sprinkled over the land. In the foreground 
towered the iron-ribbed mountains of Mor- 
ven, dark and terrible in their sterile soli- 
tude. The first time I ever saw Morven 
the ghostly mists were trailing over its 
sable parapets and there seemed no limit 
to the altitude of its mysterious, inaccessi- 



no STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

ble heights. This time its mountain masses 
stood clearly disclosed in their grim grandeur 
and cold, implacable disdain. The course 
is northwestward between Morven and Mull, 
and as we sped onward past the pleasant 
town of Salen, secure in its little bay, the 
clouds hung low, the waves glimmered 
green in the fitful flashes of sunlight, the 
sea-birds screamed their warning, and upon 
both shores as far as the eye could reach 
the white breakers foamed angrily against 
dark, riven rocks. At most times I should 
have seen those sights as signs of impend- 
ing peril. I did not heed them then. There 
are moments when the soul exults in storm 
and danger — blindly feeling, perhaps, that 
its fetters are momentarily broken and its 
freedom at last begun. Besides, Scottish 
scenery needs its environment of tempest. 
You want no gentle breezes nor languorous 
lights ; but the frowning sky, the chill wind, 
and the drifting mist. 

Back of Tobermory, which is the capital 
of Mull, there was sunshine on the distant 
hills, and to our eyes, as we looked at it 
from the sea, that ancient Highland town, 
winding up its pleasant terraces on the side 
of a noble cliff, seemed the chosen home of 
adventure and romance. Ben More and 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. Ill 

Ben Talla rose supreme at distance, bathed 
in flying light ; but Morven, under a slate- 
coloured pall, was sullen and cold. Soon 
we discerned at our right the ruins of 
Ardtornish, — where dwelt of old the Lords 
of the Isles, and where the genius of Scott 
has caused to be spoken that eloquent and 
sublime blessing of the abbot upon royal 
Bruce which is among the noblest strains 
of poetry in our language. Then, presently, 
gaining the open sea, we looked all at once 
upon the Tresnish Isles, — seeing Fladda 
and Lunga and Black Mor, which is the 
Dutchman's Cap, and Black Beg, and, far 
to the southward, the misty outline of lona; 
while more to the north and west Tiree and 
Coll, which are the haunted lands of Ossian, 
lay like dim clouds on the horizon's verge. 
Staffa is not seen as early as you see lona 
when steering this course, — which grad- 
ually turns southwest and south after Ard- 
namurchan point is left to the northward, — 
although it is nearer to you ; for the other 
isles of the Tresnish group partly hide it ; 
but it soon comes into view, lying upon the 
lonely ocean like a long ship, dismasted 
and at rest. All the world knows that flat- 
topped crag, covered with brilliant grass 
and honeycombed with caverns in which 



112 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

only cormorants and petrels breed and 
haunt, while ocean listens to its own solemn 
and tremendous music, whether of calm or 
storm. We did not attempt to land, for the 
sea had risen and the place was dangerous ; 
but our boat steamed along the south side 
of the island, and we gazed into Fingal's 
Cave and into Mackinnon's and looked long 
and wistfully at those mysterious basalt 
columns which make a temple for the wor- 
ship of nature, far grander than any crea- 
tion of the hand of man. On a previous 
occasion I had landed and explored the 
caves ; and it is always wise, when any 
form of experience has entirely filled and 
satisfied the soul, not to attempt its repeti- 
tion. The visitor to Staffa finds a sufficient 
pathway, artfully contrived, along the face 
of the cliff, and a rail by which to sustain 
himself, so that he can enter Fingal's Cave 
and walk nearly to the end of its cathedral 
arch and gaze upward at its groined vault 
of petrified pendant lava, and downward 
into its black transparent depths where 
only the monsters of ocean have their lair. 
It is a solemn and awful place, and you 
behold it without words and leave it in 
silence ; but your backward look remains 
long fixed upon it, and its living picture of 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. II3 

gloom and glory will never fade out of 
your mind. We sailed away from Staffa 
over a rough and angry sea — but no one 
thought of it. The course is southerly, with 
the great island of Mull upon the left hand, 
lona exactly ahead, and eighteen miles 
distant in the solitary western ocean the 
lighthouse on Skerry vore. We passed Loch- 
na-Keal, which nearly divides Mull, and saw 
at its mouth Gometra and Ulva, and, south 
of them, Little Colonsay. It is to Ulva that 
the hapless lovers would speed, in Campbeirs 
fine poem of Lord Ullin's Daughter. Gom- 
etra is the nearest land to Staffa, and it is 
from Gometra that the boatmen row out, 
in their life-boat, to carry visitors from the 
steamer to the isle of caves, on days when 
it is possible to land. Their boat was no- 
where on the waters as we passed, and that 
again should have been an omen ; but I was 
destined more and more to learn that the 
fascination of lona will not be baffled and 
cannot be opposed. 

lona Sound is only one mile wide ; but 
it lies nearly north and south ; the an- 
chorage ground in it is uncertain and un- 
safe ; and, under the stress of a westerly 
gale, the fierce waters of the Atlantic ocean 
pour through it in one solid torrent of irre- 

H 



114 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

sistible force and fury. On both sides, 
with but scant exception, the shore is 
fringed with rock. On the Mull coast that 
rock is generally a precipice. No splendour 
of the horrible could exceed the horrid 
grandeur of that iron shore — that gTim and 
terrible battlement which confronts and 
defies the savage sea, from Kintra around 
most part of the Eoss of Mull. Toward the 
southwest corner of Mull the Sound of 
Erraid pours its tides into the Sound of 
lona, parting Erraid island from the larger 
isle. The southwest corner of Erraid marks 
the end of lona Sound ; and not on all that 
perilous coast is there any otner spot so full 
of peril. Here are the Torranen Eocks, — 
the Otter, Erasiers, and the West Eeef, — 
and here, during days of almost unprece- 
dented tempest, watching them for hours 
and hours, have I seen great domes of 
water, foaming upward fifty feet into the 
air and gleaming perfectly black against the 
livid sky. It was toward the time of sunset 
on Eriday (September 25) that the storm 
finally broke upon us ; and from that mo- 
ment onward, with but little pause, it has 
continued to rage. Such a succession of 
westerly gales has seldom been known 
upon this coast. Such a glory of tempest 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. II5 

surely was never surpassed anywhere. All 
the night of Friday the wind moaned and 
howled around our little habitation, as with 
the many threatening voices of hungry and 
baffled beasts ; all night the rain was driven 
in tumbling sheets against our windows ; 
and all night I heard, in the darkness, the 
long roar of the clamorous, resounding sea. 
At morning, and at various other times dur- 
ing Saturday, there was sunshine, — fitfully 
commingled with cloud and rain, — but at 
no moment was there a lull in the gale ; . 
and when at noon I looked out upon the 
Sound its great waves were rolling north- 
ward along its whole extent, in one regular 
incessant procession of livid green ridges, 
each reaching almost from shore to shore 
and each mantled with an ermine crest. 
No boat could have lived a moment in such 
a sea. That night suddenly the wind fell, 
the sky cleared, the air grew soft and 
balmy, the stars came out innumerable and 
glorious in the vast, dark vault of heaven, 
and even the ocean curbed its anger and 
changed its hollow roar to a soft and solemn 
dirge. The sailors know this habit of the 
gale and are not deceived by it ; the storm 
has paused to catch its breath. Most of 
Sunday that deceitful calm continued, and 



Il6 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

no spot of earth ever looked more fair than 
lonely and beautiful lona, — silent then, 
save for the sound of Sabbath bells mingled 
with the murmur of the many-coloured, 
musical sea. Late at evening, walking over 
the moors which are at the south of the 
island, I heard a sudden sharp note in the 
southern blast, and knew that a change was 
at hand. By midnight the wind was moan- 
ing in the chimney and whistling in shrill 
puffs through every cranny of the house, 
and as we lay awake in our anxious beds 
we could hear the swirl of rain, and from 
every quarter the horrid crash of breakers 
on the rocks. The morning of Monday 
dawned brightly, but it soon darkened, and 
all day long there was an alternation of 
shadow and sunshine, — now black clouds 
and sudden bursts of drenching rain, now a 
twilight of silver mist which sometimes 
turned to glittering rainbows over the stormy 
Sound, — but never was there a pause in 
the violence of the gale. In some hours of 
the ensuing night the moon cast her mantle 
of silver upon the raging waters, giving 
them a new beauty even in their wrath and 
menace. It is a long time, though, since I 
ceased to trust the moon, and I did not 
trust her then. The night-wind in the 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. II7 

chimney was a better monitor, and of that 
night- wind in the chimney of lona I shall 
carry the memory to my dying day. Its 
prophetic note was amply justified by the 
continued storm of Tuesday — less violent, 
perhaps, but not less effective. Often, that 
day, did I climb upon Maclean's cross, 
which stands on the causeway by the nun- 
nery ruins, and there question the ocean, 
now one way and now another, for the ap- 
proach of any boat ; but the colossal break- 
ers on the Torranen rocks, seen though inau- 
dible, were all my answer. That day, also, 
climbing to the windy summit of Dun-i 
(which is the highest mountain on this 
island) , I looked forth to the terrible crags 
that gird its bay upon the west, and saw 
Cabbach island, and Dite, and Musinal, 
white with the flying shrouds of shattered 
breakers, and the spouting cave in action, 
hurling its snowy column far into the air, 
to fall in a cataract of silver. It is a cruel 
shore, look at it from what point you will. 
Early this morning I was on the most placid 
part of it that I have found, — the Martyrs' 
Bay, — but even there the sullen waves 
were storming up the beach and strewing 
its hard white sands with long, serpent- 
like grasses and with many sinister shapes 



:i8 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

of the brown and wrinkled and slimy weeds 
of the sea. To that beach, in ancient days, 
came many a train of funeral barges, with 
muffled banners and with coronach, bring- 
ing home dead kings of Scotland, for burial 
in the Holy Isle. Over those white sands 
was borne the mangled body of " the 
gracious Duncan," who rests by Oran's 
chapel, in yonder field ; and not long after- 
ward, as many believe, was brought the 
ravaged corse of his cruel murderer, to 
sleep beside him in the same royal sepul- 
chre. Duncan and Macbeth side by side, 
and the grass growing over them, and the 
wild sea-birds screaming above their name- 
less rest ! 

Such an opportunity for minute observa- 
tion of this remarkable island is not likely 
to occur again, and whether in storm or 
calm, it has not been neglected. Standing 
upon the summit of Dun-i the wanderer 
looks northward to the hook-like point of 
lona and its wide curves of yellow beach 
where the white breakers are sporting in 
their dance of death. Mysterious Staffa, 
in the northern distance, is distinctly visi- 
ble. Eastward, across the swift and raging 
channel, are the swarthy rocks of Mull, 
with the treeless mountains of Mull and 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. IIQ 

Morven towering beyond them, blended in 
one colossal heap of chaotic splendour. In 
the west is the wild Atlantic, breaking along 
the whole three miles of crag and beach 
that make lona's outmost coast. In the 
foreground of the southern prospect is a 
spine of rock-ribbed hill, beyond and around 
which the land shelves downward into 
levels, toward the encircling sea. More 
distant in the south the steeps once more 
ascend, presenting a wide, broken surface 
oi: lonely moorland, covered with rock and 
heather, in which the shaggy black and 
brown cattle, with their wide- spreading 
horns and their great, luminous, beautiful 
eyes, couch or stray, in indolent composure. 
At the extreme southern point the isle pre- 
sents a lofty crescent headland of riven 
rock, — each cleft a dark ravine, and each 
declining crag margined at its base with 
cruel, jagged points, like iron teeth. All 
that savage scene, in one comprehensive 
glance, the gazer from Dun-i may gather 
into his vision ; and whether he regards it 
as nature in her naked glory, or as the 
holy ground that religion has hallowed with 
her blessing and history has covered with 
the garlands of deathless renown, he cannot 
look upon it unmoved, and he can never 



I20 STOKM-BOUND IN lONA. 

forget either its magnificent aspect or its 
illustrious meaning. 

lona is three miles long, and at its widest 
point a mile and a half wide, and it con- 
tains about two thousand acres of land, of 
which about a quarter is under cultivation — 
for oats, hay, vegetables, and flowers. Three- 
quarters of it are devoted to pasture. There 
are within its limits, of cattle, horses, sheep, 
and other animals, about a thousand. The 
collie dog and the household cat are fre- 
quently encountered, and you will not stroll 
far upon the moors without meeting the 
dark and stately Highland bull. I counted 
about fifty dwellings. The population is 
small. The minister of lona, the Rev. 
Archibald Macmillan, whose friendly ac- 
quaintance I had the pleasure and privilege 
to gain, told me that his parish — which 
comprises lona and a section of the western 
end of the Ross of Mull — contains about 
five hundred and fifteen persons, of whom 
about three hundred dwell in Mull. The 
church is the Presbyterian church of Scot- 
land, but there is also a free church. One 
of the buildings is the manse. Another is 
the schoolhouse. All the houses are made 
of stone and some of them have a roof of 
thatch which is held in its place by clamps, 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 121 

superincumbent timbers, and heavy weights 
of stone or iron. There are two hotels, — 
one, the St. Columba, kept by Captain 
Eitchie ; the other, the Argyll Arms, kept 
by John Macdonald — the otiicial guide to 
lona, as his father was before him. The 
crofters, all of whom are prosperous, live 
in little stone cottages, rarely more than 
one story high. The village consists of a 
single street, with those humble huts ranged 
upon one side of it — their doors and win- 
dows facing eastward toward the Sound. 
The postoffice is also a shop, and there are 
two or three shops beside. Three times 
a week a little steamboat, sailing out of 
Bunessan, — a town of Mull, sheltered in 
Loch-na-Keal, — calls at lona, if she can, 
and takes away a mail, and leaves one, — 
touching, by means of a skiff, at St. Ronan's 
Bay. The settled part of lona is a slope 
upon its eastern shore, not distant from 
the northern extremity — a region protected 
by the hills from those westerly and south- 
erly winds that are the scourge of the island. 
There are only a few roads, but the pedes- 
trian may readily make his way almost 
anywhere, without fear of trespass. The 
inhabitants are generally religious and are 
orderly, courteous, and gentle. No doctor 



122 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

dwells in the place and no resident of it is 
ever sick. Death may come by drowning 
or by other accident, but as a rule, the 
people live until they are worn out, and so 
expire, naturally, from extreme age. The 
Gaelic language, although it is dying away 
in the Highlands, is still spoken here. The 
minister, preaching on alternate Sundays 
at lona and at Bunessan, speaks in Eng- 
lish first, and then repeats his discourse in 
Gaelic, or he reverses that order, — and for 
both sermons he has an audience. It was 
my good fortune to hear him on September 
27, together with about fifty other persons, 
seated on wooden benches in a whitewashed 
room, and I have never heard a preacher 
more devout, earnest, sincere, and simple. 
The school is largely followed, — the present 
attendance now being nearly seventy pupils, 
— and in the schoolhouse I found a library 
of nearly five hundred volumes (there are 
four hundred and fifteen titles in the cata- 
logue), collected partly through the friendly 
ministrations of the Rev. Leigh Richmond, 
who visited lona in 1820, and partly con- 
tributed by Mr. Thomas Cook, of London, 
the organizer of Cook's Tours. Shake- 
speare, Scott, Macaulay, Hume, Smollett, 
Tytler, Dickens, Sydney Smith, Cowper, 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 1 23 

John Wilson, and J. R. Green, are among 
the authors represented. Several volumes 
of Cook's Voyages are there, and so are 
ten volumes of Chambers' Encyclopaedia. 
Many sermons, however, appear in that 
collection, together with many tomes of the 
order of the everlasting Josephus — whom 
everybody venerates and nobody reads. 
Among the benefactors to the lona Library 
are the Rev. Dr. S. Dwyer ; G. Gallie, of 
Glasgow ; A. Philp, of Bute ; F. Clapp, of 
Exeter ; Rev. G. F. W. Munby, of Turvey ; 
Miss Copeland, of Dumfries ; Miss Roberts ; 
and the directors of the Scottish Temper- 
ance League. No newspaper is published 
at lona, but there is a little printing-office 
near the St. Columba hotel, and from that 
germ may be expected, one day or another, 
such practical growth of enterprise and of 
civilising thought as follows in the track of 
a wisely ordered press. The Presbyterian 
house of worship was built in 1830, and it 
is a primitive sort of structure, now much 
dilapidated ; but in every attribute that 
should appertain to the character of a 
clergyman its minister would do honour to 
the finest church in the kingdom. lona is 
owned by the Duke of Argyll, to whose 
family it was granted by Charles I. Before 



124 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

that time it had long been held by the 
chieftains of the great house of Maclean. 
When Dr. Johnson came here, with Bos- 
well, in 1773, Maclean was their companion, 
— then the lord of the clan, — and both 
Johnson and Boswell have borne fervent 
testimony to the unstinted hospitality with 
which they were received, notwithstanding 
that the Campbells were in possession of 
the land. The sturdy doctor was obliged, 
indeed, to sleep on the hay in a barn, with 
his portmanteau for a pillow ; but that was 
the best accommodation attainable in the 
island, and the Maclean slept beside him. 
There is greater comfort to be found in 
lona now, but there is no luxury. Nor is 
this a place for luxury. Here you are cut 
off from the world. Here you are alone. 
Here you are brought face to face with 
eternity. Here, accordingly, if anywhere 
on earth, the mind would be inspired, the 
heart would be clean, and life would be 
simple and pure. On one of those storm- 
stricken days I stood alone upon the Hill 
of Angels and looked off at the grim deso- 
lation of the dark Atlantic plain ; and I 
could not wonder, as I felt the overwhelm- 
ing solitude and grandeur of the place, at 
the old superstitious belief that when St. 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 1 25 

Columba stood there, thirteen centuries 
ago, the white-robed beings of another 
world came floating down from heaven to 
talk with their brother upon earth. 

It is perhaps trite history that Columba 
came from Ireland to lona in the year 563, 
bringing Christianity to the Picts of the 
Western Islands, and that he made lona 
the fountain-head of religion and learning 
for Northern Europe, — dying there a,d. 
597, at the age of seventy-six. No one can 
speak of lona, though, without speaking of 
her Saint. His spirit is indelibly stamped 
upon the place, and whosoever walks in his 
footsteps, must venerate his memory and 
hallow his name. The monastic remains, 
however, that the traveller finds in the 
island are the ruins of red granite buildings 
of a much later period than that of Columba 

— structures that his pious labour had 
rendered possible, but which his eyes never 
beheld. The nunnery, St. Oran's chapel, 
the cathedral and its adjacent fragments of 
monastery, all roofless, and all the sport 
of time and decay, are relics of about the 
twelfth century. Parts of those ancient 
fabrics are, possibly, of a date still earlier 

— ihe noble cathedral tower (up which you 
may ascend by a spiral stone staircase of 



126 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

forty-two steps), the arches of its north 
transept, and the simple form and massive 
and beautiful arched doorway of St, Oran's 
chapel bearing architectural traces of essen- 
tially remote antiquity. The church that 
Columba erected did not stand upon the 
site of the present cathedral ruin, but was 
situated further to the north and nearer to 
the sea ; while the place of his cell — wherein 
his pillow was the sacred heart-shaped stone 
now preserved in the ruined chancel — is 
believed to have been the site of a cottage 
under the friendly shelter of Dun-i, a little 
northward from the Argyll cross. (That 
monument, picturesque in itself and melan- 
choly in its loneliness, at the bleak roadside, 
commemorates, " in the island that she 
loved," that beautiful and lamented lady, 
the first contemporary Duchess of Argyll.) 
But whatever may be the measure of their 
antiquity, those gaunt ecclesiastical relics 
are more holy and beautiful than words 
can tell, in their lone magnificence and deso- 
late grandeur of ruin and decay. Accurate 
detail of what they are and of what they 
contain is well-nigh impossible, even to an- 
tiquarian research. The ravages equally 
of barbarian hordes and of relentless time 
have left scarcely anything in its place, 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 1 27 

whether of statue, or carving, or inscription, 
or symbol, or brass, or picture, or memorial 
stone. But of their general character, — 
their rugged strength, their romantic as- 
pect, their awful solemnity of isolation amid 
a wilderness of brown crag and tempestuous 
sea, — and of the sublimity which they 
must have derived as well from their sacred 
purpose as from their marvellous natural 
investiture, it is not difficult to judge. Im- 
agination supplies every defect of knowl- 
edge, and the s]Dirit that gazes upon those 
remnants of vanished greatness is lifted far 
above this world. The natural scene is the 
same to-day that it was of old. A thousand 
years make no change in those pitiless 
rocks and that stormy and savage clime. 
But man and all his works, — all his hopes 
and fears, his loves and hatreds, his ambi- 
tions and passions, his famous deeds, his 
labours and his sufferings, — have been 
swept away, and are become even as an 
echo, a shadow, a hollow, dying word, a 
pinch of dust borne seaward on the gale. 
In the precincts of the cathedral, there, at 
the foot of Oran's chapel, was the burial- 
ground of the kings of Scotland — Eeleig 
Oran. The grass grows thick upon it. No 
stone remains in its original place. The 



128 STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 

rude letters and symbolic carvings have 
been blasted by time and storm. The dust 
of the humbler dead has mingled with the 
dust of warriors and of princes in its royal 
soil. The rooks that haunt the ruined 
cathedral tower caw over it as they pass, 
and over it sounds forever the melancholy 
booming of the surges of the restless sea. 
It is a place of utter desolation, where noth- 
ing reigns save nature's stony mockery of 
all the achievements of man. What colos- 
sal forces of human strength and feeling 
lie hushed and cold beneath that humble 
sod ; what heroes of forgotten battles ; what 
heroines of old romance ; what black, self- 
tortured hearts of specious, ruthless mur- 
derers ; what busy brains of crafty, scheming 
statesmen, toiling ever through tortuous 
courses for the power that they never could 
long maintain ! Monarchs and warriors 
that fought against Kome, in the great days 
of Belisarius and Constantine ; kings that 
fell in battle and kings that died by the 
base hand of midnight murder ; kings that 
perished by the wrath of their jealous wives, 
and kings who died peacefully in the arms 
of mother church ; princes of Ireland and 
of Norway, and Lords of the Isles — there 
they all sleep, in unknown graves and in- 



STORM-BOUND IN lONA. 1 29 

accessible solitude, beneath the brooding 
wings of oblivion. Hard must be the heart, 
insensible the mind, that could dwell upon 
that stupendous scene of mortality without 
awe and reverence, or could turn away from 
it without having learned, once and forever, 
the great lesson of humility and submission. 

Note on Macbeth and Duncan. — It is a 
part of the tradition that Macbeth, after his 
defeat on "high Dunsinane hill," which is 
about eight miles northeast of Perth, was over- 
taken in flight, and was slain, at Lumphanan, 
a little north of the Dee, about midway be- 
tween Ballater and Aberdeen. A cairn that 
bears his name, and is dubiously said to mark 
his grave, may be seen in a meadow of Lum- 
phanan. Authentic historians, however, de- 
clare that his remains were conveyed to lona, 
which had been the imperial sepulchre from, 
at latest, the time of Kenneth III, 974. The 
custom was to embark the royal corse at Cor- 
pach, on Loch Eil. The funeral barges would 
thence make their way through lonely seas to 
the holy isle. The burial of Duncan at St. 
Columba's Cell is mentioned by Shakespeare : 

" Rosse. "Where is Duncan's 'body? 
Macduff. Carried to Colmes-kill, 
The sacred store-house of his predecessors 
And guardian of their bones." 



II 

SHRINES OF LITERATURE 



XI. 

THE FOREST OF ARDEN : AS YOU LIKE IT. 

IN Shakespeare's youthful days the Forest 
of Arden was close at his hand and 
there is no doubt that he often wandered in 
it and that he knew it well. It covered a 
large tract of country in Warwickshire, ex- 
tending from the west bank of the Avon 
six or eight miles northwest of Stratford, 
and while that region is cleared now, and 
beautifully cultivated, and sprinkled with 
trim villages and lovely manors, and diver- 
sified with many appellations, the general 
name of Arden cleaves to it still. Many of 
its great trees, indeed, sturdy and splendid 
at a vast age, remain in flourishing luxuri- 
ance, to indicate what it was ; and if you 
stand upon the hill near Beaudesert church 
— where once the banners of Peter de Mont- 
fort floated from his battlements — and 
gaze over the adjacent plains, your eyes 
will rest upon one of the sweetest landscapes 
in all the delicious realm that environs the 

^33 



134 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

heart of England. It is idle to suppose that 
Shakespeare was unacquainted with that 
old woodland and the storied places round 
about it — with Wroxall Abbey, and the 
moated grange of Baddesley Clinton, and 
all the historic spots associated with the 
wars of Henry III., the dark fate of Sir 
Piers Gaveston the handsome Earl of Corn- 
wall, and the romantic traditions of the 
great house of Warwick. Erom his earliest 
boyhood this region must have been his pre- 
empted field of exploration and adventure 
and must have been haunted for him with 
stately shapes and glorious visions. His 
mother's name was Mary Arden ; and we 
may be sure that with her name, to him so 
beautiful and so sacred, he always asso- 
ciated the freedom and the splendour of 
that romantic forest. When therefore we 
read his exquisite comedy of As You Like 
It, and observe, as we cannot help observ- 
ing, that every flower that blooms, every 
leaf that trembles, and every breeze that 
murmurs in it is redolent of his native 
Warwickshire, we are naturally disinclined 
to surround a purely ideal and fanciful 
conception with the accessories of literal 
Erance, or to endure an iron-bound conven- 
tionality of treatment in the illustration of it. 



AS YOU LIKE IT. I35 

There are, to be sure, a few French names 
in the piece, and in its first scene Oliver 
designates Orlando as ' ' the stubbornest 
young fellow of .France ' ' ; but later we meet 
with the serpent and the lioness, indigenous 
to the jungles of Asia. The story upon 
which, to a considerable extent, it was 
founded — Thomas Lodge's novel of Rosa- 
lynd — is French in its location and its per- 
sons ; but Shakespeare, in his use of that 
novel, has played havoc equally with the 
geography and the nomenclature. His scene 
is anywhere and nowhere ; but if in this 
piece the wings of his imagination do brush 
against the solid ground at all it is against 
that haunted woodland of Arden which 
waved its sweet green boughs around his 
English home. As You Like It is an Eng- 
lish pastoral comedy, through and through, 
and therefore it ought to be dressed in Eng- 
lish pastoral robes — with such genial though 
discreet license as poetic fancy might prompt 
and approve — and it ought to be acted 
under such greenwood trees as bloom in 
the vale of the Red Horse, where Shake- 
speare lived and loved. Planch e will have 
it — since Shakespeare has introduced pos- 
sibly French dukes into the story, whereas 
in the original those potentates are cer- 



136 THE FOREST OF ARDEiST : 

tainly Frencli kings — that the action must 
be supposed to occur in France, and to oc- 
cur at a time when yet independent duchies 
existed in that country ; and that time he 
declares must not be later than the reign of 
Louis XII. (1498-1515), who married Anne 
of Brittany and so incorporated into the 
royal dominions the last existing fief to the 
crown. It must be a French garb of the pre- 
ceding reign, says that learned antiquarian 
and rose of heraldry — the reign of Charles 
VIII. (1470-1498) ; and that will be pictur- 
esque and appropriate. In that way at once 
this lawless, lilting, drifting fiction is 
brought within the precise lines of fact and 
duly provided with a local habitation. A 
distinct purpose and a definite plan, of 
course, there must be, when a piece is to be 
acted : only it should be urged and allowed 
that in dealing with this exceptionally va- 
grant play the imagination ought to be per- 
mitted to have a free rein. As You Like It 
is a comedy which in a peculiar aiKl un- 
usual degree requires imagination ; and not 
with those only who present it but with 
those who see it performed. 

The composition of this piece occurred at 
a specially interesting period of Shake- 
speare's life. He was in his thirty-fifth 



AS YOU LIKE IT. \yj 

year, and he had, as it proved, lived two- 
thirds of his allotted time. He had v^ritten 
all but one {Henry VIII.) of his English his- 
torical plays ; he had written eight out of 
his fourteen comedies ; he had written 
Romeo and Juliet ; while his great tragedies 
of Hamlet and Julius Ccesar were close at 
hand and must have been much in his 
thoughts. [The i3rst draft of Hamlet^ in- 
deed, may have been written long before 
his thirty-fifth year.] Imagination had ob- 
tained full possession of him by this time, 
and he was looking at life with a compre- 
hensive vision and writing about it with an 
imperial affluence of freedom, feeling, and 
power. No work of art was ever yet created 
by anybody without labour, but the propor- 
tion of effort differs in different cases, and 
surely no quality is more conspicuous in 
As You Like It than that of spontaneity. 
The piece is exceptional for its fluent grace. 
It must have been written easily and in a 
happy, dream-like, careless mood, half rev- 
erie and half frolic. There is much wise 
philosophy in it, veiled with playfulness ; 
there is much in it of the poetry which with 
Shakespeare was incidental and natural ; 
and here and there it is lightly touched with 
the pensive melancholy of a mind that is 



138 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

disenchanted with the world : but its pre- 
dominant tone is sprightly ; and we may- 
be sure that Shakespeare was at ease in 
its creation, and perhaps we may dis- 
cern in it much of his temperament and 
of his habitual mental attitude — which 
apparently was that of calm, benign, hu- 
morous, half-pitying, half-playful tolerance 

— toward human nature and human life. 
He threw aside all restraint when writ- 
ing this play, and allowed his fancies to 
take care of themselves. The persons 
who figure in As You Like It are all, 
in some measure, shadowy. They are at 
once real and unreal. They lay hold of 
experience but their grasp is frail. The 
loves of Orlando and Rosalind are not the 
loves of Romeo and Juliet. The cynical 
musings of Jaques are not the corrosive 
reflections of Hamlet. The waggish droll- 
ery of Touchstone is not the pathetic levity 
of the Fool in Lear. The drift, the sub- 
stance, the significance is "as you like it " 

— as you may please to find it ; grave or. 
gay, according to the eyes with which you 
look and the heart with which you feel. 
Those persons, entangled with incidents 
that are mostly impossible, flit about under 
green leaves, amid the mossy trunks of 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 39 

slumberous tre^s, in dells that are musical 
with bird-songs and running water and res- 
onant with the echoes of tlie huntsman's 
horn ; and while the fragrant wind blows 
on their faces and the wild deer dash away 
at their approach they play their parts in a 
sweetly fantastic story of fortune's vicissi- 
tudes and love's delays, such as never could 
literally have happened in the world, but - 
which the great poet, in his own wonderful 
way, has made tributary to an exposition 
of the strongest contrasts that human ex- 
perience can afford. There is one obvious 
lesson to be deducexl from this understand- 
ing of the subject. The reader or the spec- 
tator who would fully enjoy As You Like It 
must accept it in the mood in which it was 
conceived. He knows that lions do not 
range French or English forests, and that 
Rosalind, though in man's apparel, would 
at once be recognised by the eyes of love. 
Yet to those and to all discrepancies he is 
blind. He even can assent to the spectacle 
of Jaques stretched beside the brawling 
stream at the foot of the antique oak, speak- 
ing his sermons upon human weakness, 
fohy, and injustice, with nobody for an 
audience. He feels himself set free from 
the world of hard facts. He is in Arden. 



140 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

The antiquated metrical story, Coke's 
TaJe of GameJyn, wliich is older than Chau- 
cer, was the precursor of Lodge's novel of 
Hosahjnd, or Euphues' Golden Legacye, 
published in 1500, and this novel of JRosa- 
lynd, by one of Shakespeare's contempora- 
ries, was in turn the precursor of As Yo2t 
Like It. Shakespeare followed the novel in 
his use of incidents and conduct of plot, 
but he has transfigured it by his investiture 
of the characters with new and often ex- 
alted personality, and by his poetical ex- 
pression and embellishment of them. He fur- 
thermore invented and introduced Jaques, 
Touchstone, and Audrey. The comedy 
was not printed during his lifetime and it 
did not make its appearance till Heminge 
and Condell published the first folio, in 
1623. The piece as there given is divided 
into acts and scenes. The text was sub- 
sequently altered for the second folio (1632), 
and substantially according to the form then 
adopted the comedy has survived. The first 
text, however, is a good one. Those dis- 
crepancies, by the way, between the texts 
of the four Shakespeare folios, interfere 
sadly with the addle-headed and superflu- 
ous industry of Mr. Donnelly and his disci- 
ples in their manufacture of Bacon crypto- 



AS YOU LIKE IT. I4I 

grams. The first performance of As You 
Like It appears to have occurred at the 
Globe theatre m the first year of its exist- 
ence (that house was opened early in 1599 
and was burnt down on June 29, 1613), and 
an ancient and apparently authentic tra- 
dition (it was first recorded by William 
Oldys, 1687-1761) declares that Shake- 
speare himself acted in it as Adam. The 
epilogue is thought to be, at least in part, 
spurious. It obviously was written with a 
view to its being spoken by the boy who 
played the woman part of Eosalind in 
Shakespeare's time and later. It is a feeble 
composition, whoever wrote it. It is slightly 
altered for stage use. 

It has often been urged that the necessity 
of providing occupation for a dramatic com- 
pany and of furnishing a novelty to win the 
public attention and support is a sufficient 
motive, or imi^ulse, or inspiration for the 
making of a good play ; and the believers 
in that doctrine — that eminent Shakespeare 
scholar Richard Grant White being conspic- 
uously one of them — usually point to 
Shakespeare as an example in proof of this 
practical and sordid theory. But Shake- 
speare's plays it is found, tax to the utmost 
limit the best powers of the best actors ; 



142 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

and furthermore those plays contain, as a 
rule, more material, and that of a higher 
order, than the average public has ever 
comprehended or ever will comprehend. If 
indeed Shakespeare wrote his plays simply 
to fit the company engaged at the Globe 
theatre and the Blackfriars — in both of 
which he appears to have owned an interest 
and at both of which the same company 
performed — or if he wrote them simply to 
please the passing caprice of the time, he 
must have had a marvellous dramatic com- 
pany in his view, and he must have been 
aware of a still more marvellous community 
to be addressed. Either this or assuredly 
he made needless exertions, since he has 
over-freighted his plays with every sort of 
mental and spiritual wealth and beauty. 
The affluence of mentality in the comedy of 
As Toil Like It — consisting in the quaint 
whimsicality of its humour, the complex 
quality of its chief characters, the airy, del- 
icate, evanescent poetry of its atmosphere, 
the sequestration of its scene, and the fan- 
tastic caprice and indolent drift of its inci- 
dents — has always rendered it a difficult 
play for actors to treat in a perfectly ade- 
quate and successful manner, has always 
kept it rather remote from general appreci- 



AS YOU LIKE IT. I43 

ation, and has made it a cause of some per- 
plexity to the critical mind. The truth 
doubtless is that Shakespeare, out of the 
necessities of his nature and not merely out 
of those of worldly circumstance, while la- 
bouring for the stage, wrote for a larger 
theatre than ever was comprised within 
four walls and in accordance — whether 
consciously or not — with higher laws of 
expression than those that govern a theat- 
rical manager in the matter of demand and 
supply in dealing with the public. He was 
not a photographer ; he was an artist. He 
did not copy life ; he transfigured it and 
idealised it. The great creations of his 
dramatic genius are not actual men and 
women of the everyday world ; they are 
representative types of human nature, and 
there is always a deeper meaning in them 
than the obvious one that appears upon the 
surface. The same mystery invests them 
that nature has diffused around the origin 
and destiny of the human soul. For this 
reason they inspire incessant interest, and 
hence it is that the field of Shakespearean 
study can never be exhausted. 

In As You Like It Shakespeare's mood, 
while happy and frolicsome, is also whim- 
sical, satirical, full of banter, covertly wise 



144 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

but outwardly fantastic. He fools you to 
the top of your bent. He is willing that 
you should take the play in earnest if you 
like to do so, but he smiles all the while at 
your credulity. He will end it rationally 
enough, in the matter of doing poetic justice ; 
but in the meanwhile he has turned every- 
thing upside down and he is making merry 
over the spectacle. Such incidents as the 
radical conversion of the wicked duke by 
the good hermit and the instantaneous re- 
generation of the malignant Oliver by his 
brother's single act of generosity are suffi- 
ciently typical of this poetic pleasantry. 
The most sonorous and apparently the most 
searching observations upon human experi- 
ence are put into the mouth of Jaques ; but 
Jaques is perhaps the least sane and sub- 
stantial of the representative persons in the 
comedy — being an epicurean in sentiment 
and a wayward cynic, whose remarks, al- 
though quite true as far as they go and won- 
derfully felicitous in manner, really contain 
no deep truth and no final wisdom, but are 
alike fragile and fantastic ; as any one can 
see who will, for a test, set them beside 
either of the four great soliloquies in Ham- 
let, or beside the principal speeches of 
Ulysses, in Troilus and Cressida. The wisest 



AS YOU LIKE IT. I45 

man in the play is the professed Fool, — by 
whom and by the old servant Adam the 
only manifestations are made that the piece 
contains of the highest of human virtues, 
self-sacrifice : for even as Adam devotes all 
to Orlando so does Touchstone devote all 
to Celia. No especial stress was laid on 
the lover. He is handsome, pure, ingenu- 
ous, and brave, and he serves his purpose ; 
but it is evident that Shakespeare loved 
Rosalind, since in drawing her he ceases to 
jest. Rosalind is not merely the heroine of 
an impossible courtship in a visionary for- 
est ; she is the typical perfection of enchant- 
ing womanhood. She is everything that 
man loves in woman. She is neither an 
angel nor a fairy. She is flesh and blood ; 
and while her mind and accomplishments 
are noble and her attributes of character 
poetical, she is depicted in absolute har- 
mony with that significant line, wrapping 
truth with a jest, in Shakespeare's one hun- 
dred and thirtieth sonnet, 

" My mistress, when she walks, treads on the 
ground." 

Amid the sprightly caprice, the tantalising 
banter, the drift and whirl of fantastic inci- 
dents, and the glancing lights of folly and 

K 



146 THE FOREST OF ARDEN t 

wisdom that constitute this comedy the 
luxuriant, sumptuous, dazzling, entrancing 
figure of Rosalind stands out clear and firm 
in the warm light of its own surpassing 
loveliness. And this is the personality that 
has from time to time brought As You Like 
It upon the stage, and temporarily at least 
has kept it there. 

At the time of Shakespeare's death (1616) 
two movements had already begun which, 
gathering power and momentum as the 
years rolled on, have done much to shape 
the dubious, shifting, political condition of 
the world of to-day. One of these was a 
movement in favour of government by the 
many ; the other was a movement against 
the Roman Catholic church. Both pre- 
vailed in the establishment of the Common- 
wealth, and one of the first institutions that 
went down under them was the British 
Drama. Shakespeare was an exceedingly 
j)opular author during his lifetime, and his 
works must have been in request for a con- 
siderable time after his death, because the 
first folio, 1623, was succeeded by another 
in 1632 ; but soon after that date theatres 
and plays began to drop out of the pub- 
lic view. The fecundity of play-writers 
between Shakespeare's theatrical advent 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 47 

(1588) and the year 1640 must indeed have 
been abundant, since out of nearly or quite 
six hundred plays that got into print in 
England before the Kestoration (1660) only 
fifty-eight are thought to have existed before 
Shakespeare began to write. The others, 
therefore, must have been made during and 
after his immediate time. But the war 
between Charles I. and his Parliament put 
an end to that dramatic episode ; and pres- 
ently, when the Puritans prevailed,' they 
authorised by law (1647) the destruction of 
theatres and the public flagellation of actors. 
There is a great darkness, of course, over 
that period of theatrical history. Soon 
after the Restoration, indeed, the third folio 
of Shakespeare's works made its appear- 
ance (1663-64), containing six if not seven 
plays that were spurious ; and in 1685 came 
the fourth folio ; yet all the while Shake- 
speare seems to have been banished from 
the stage, and in general from contempo- 
rary knowledge. Dryden mangled his lovely 
comedy of The Tempest (1670), and his 
noble tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra 
(1678), and sapiently referred to his man- 
ner as "out of date." Not till the period 
of Queen Anne did the Shakespeare revival 
begin, and even then it was a languid force. 



148 THE FOREST OF AEDEN : 

But it began — and little by little the plays 
of the great master made their way back to 
their rightful pre-eminence. 

As You Like It, after its first career at 
the Globe theatre — and whether this was 
long or short nobody knows — seems to 
have sunk into abeyance and to have re- 
mained unused for a long time. It may 
have been revived at the period of the Res- 
toration, but I have found no record of its 
presentation in that epoch. An injurious 
alteration of it, called Love In a Forest, by 
Charles Johnson, was acted at Drury Lane, 
for six nights, in 1723, and was published 
in that year ; but it is the opinion of Genest 
that the original piece was not acted in 
England at any time after the Restoration 
until 1740. On December 20 in that year 
it was brought forward at Drury Lane with 
a brilliant cast. Mrs. Pritchard was the 
Rosalind. This was repeated on January 
16, 1741, and twenty-five times during tliat 
season. Within the next sixty years As 
Ton Like It was reproduced upon the Lon- 
don stage thirteen times. 

The immediate competitors and the suc- 
cessors of Mrs. Pritchard as Rosalind, 
counting to the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, were Peg Woffington ; Mrs. Dancer 



AS YOU LIKE IT. I49 

(who subsequently became Mrs. Barry, 
wife of Spranger Barry, and finally Mrs. 
Crawford) ; Mrs. Bulkeley ; Miss Younge ; 
Miss Frodsham ; Mrs. Siddons ; and Mrs. 
Jordan. Peg WoflBngton as Rosalind de- 
lighted everybody. Her first performance 
of the part was given during her first season 
on the London stage, after she had left 
Covent Garden and gone to Drury Lane, 
where she first appeared on September 8, 
1741, as Sylvia in The Recruiting Officer^ 
under the management of Fleetwood. Kitty 
Clive played Celia when Woffington first 
embodied Rosalind, and Theophilus Gibber 
played Jaques. It was in Rosalind that 
this great actress was last seen upon the 
stage. May 3, 1757, in Covent Garden — the 
tragic fact of her collapse while speaking 
the epilogue being one of the best known 
incidents in dramatic history. Without 
doubt she was the best Rosalind of the 
eighteenth century. Mrs. Dancer came 
next and was deemed superb. Mrs. Sid- 
dons first acted the part on April 30, 1785 ; 
but as might have been foreseen she did not 
succeed in it. The record made by Genest 
is explanatory and explicit : " Mrs. Siddons 
contrived a dress for Rosalind which was 
neither male nor female. For this she was 



150 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

ridiculed in tlie papers, and very deservedly. 
She had it entirely at her option to act 
Rosalind or not to act Rosalind ; but when 
she determined to act the part it was her 
duty to dress it properly. Mrs. Siddons 
did not add to her reputation by her per- 
formance of Rosalind, and when Mrs. Jor- 
dan had played the character few persons 
wished to see Mrs. Siddons in it." Mrs. 
Abington, in a conversation with the vet- 
eran Crabb Robinson, mentioned that effort 
on the part of Mrs. Siddons long afterward 
(June 16, 1811). "Early in life," she 
remarked, "Mrs. Siddons was anxious to 
succeed in comedy, and played Rosalind 
before I retired." And Mr. Robinson in- 
genuously adds : " Mrs. Siddons she praised, 
though not with the warmth of a genuine 
admirer." Mrs. Jordan first acted Rosa- 
lind on April 13, 1787. This was also at 
Drury Lane. John Philip Kemble played 
Orlando. The success of the actress was 
brilliant. It was felt that the part had not 
been acted in such a winning manner since 
the days of the incomparable Woffington. 
"The elastic step, the artless action, the 
sincere laugh, and the juicy tones of her 
clear and melodious voice ' ' (John Gait) 
were all, we may be sure, delightful embel- 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 151 

lishments of that performance. ' ' Her Rosa- 
lind," saysOxberry, "was exquisite." Mrs. 
Jordan herself, however, seems to have 
taken a different view of the subject, since 
long afterward, in the green-room at Covent 
Garden on a night when she was playing 
Rosalind, she said to John Taylor {Records 
of 3fy Life, p. 122) : "If the public had 
any taste how could they bear me in the 
part which I play to-night, and which is far 
above my habits and pretensions ! " Of 
Mrs. Dancer as Rosalind (1767), the same 
memoir makes enthusiastic mention no less 
than three times in different chapters. 
" Mrs. Dancer's Rosalind," says that vet- 
eran judge, "was the most perfect repre- 
sentation of the character that I ever 
witnessed. It was tender, animated, and 
playful to the highest degree. She gave the 
' Cuckoo Song ' with admirable humour." 

Since 1800 As You Like It has been often 
in the public view on both sides of the 
Atlantic. Its first revival at London within 
the present century was made on October 
25, 1805, at Covent Garden. The cast then 
included John Philip Kemble as Jaques, 
Charles Kemble as Orlando, Fawcett as 
Touchstone, Incledon as Amiens, Murray 
as Adam, Brunton as Oliver, Blanchard as 



1^2 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

William, Miss Smith as Rosalind, Miss 
Brunton as Celia, and Mrs. Mattocks as 
Audrey. The book of this play, as revised 
and j)repared for the stage by J. P. Kemble, 
was published in 1810. Macready on vari- 
ous occasions enacted Jaques, but he has 
left no record of it that is usefully signifi- 
cant. His first performance of it was given 
in 1819-20, at Covent Garden. "Jaques 
was a study for me," he says, in his Auto- 
biography^ "one of those real varieties of 
mind with which it is a pleasure in represen- 
tation to identify one's self." Samuel Phelps, 
however, who participated in Macready's re- 
vival of the comedy at Drury Lane on Octo- 
ber 1, 1842, told his biographer John Coleman 
that it was ' ' the most superb production of 
As You Like It the world has ever seen or 
ever will see." Rosalind was then taken by 
Mrs. Msbett. "Not having seen her," said 
the veteran, " you don't know what beauty is. 
Her voice was liquid music. Her laugh — 
there never was such a laugh ! Her eyes, 
living crystals, lamps lit with light divine ! 
Her gorgeous neck and shoulders — her 
superbly symmetrical limbs, her grace, her 
taste, her nameless but irresistible charm. 
. . . You may rave about Helen Faucit's 
Rosalind, but you never saw Nisbett." 



AS YOU LIKE IT. 1 53 

This estimate, so much in the vein of Sir 
Anthony Absolute's description of Lydia 
Languish, glances at a woman whose por- 
traits show her to have been very beautiful. 
She was the daughter of Captain Mac- 
namara, who is supposed to have suggested 
the immortal Costigan, and she is said to 
have been the original of Miss Fotheringay, 
in Pendennis. Macready's comment on 
that revival of ^s You Like It is in humor- 
ous contrast with that of Phelps. " The 
only shortcoming in the whole perform- 
ance," he said to Lady Pollock, " was the 
Kosalind of Mrs. Nisbett, a charming actress 
in many characters, but not equal to that. 
She was not disagreeable, but she was 
inadequate." And Macready spoke of 
having introduced into his revival, with 
excellent effect, the delicate tinkle of sheep- 
bells, as if the flock were somewhere feed- 
ing in pastures incident to the Forest of 
Arden. The best of the Rosalinds in his 
eyes, and indeed in the eyes of many judges 
of a past generation, was Helen Faucit, now 
Lady Martin, who acted the part for the 
first time on March 18, 1839, at Covent 
Garden, with James Anderson as Orlando, 
Macready as Jaques, and Phelps as the 
First Lord. Ellen Tree (Mrs. Charles 



154 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

Kean) came next, who acted Rosalind on 
September 13, 1839, at the London Hay- 
market, and the old records abound with 
praises of her performance. Buckstone 
appeared as Touchstone, Phelps as Jaques, 
and Priscilla Horton (Mrs, German Reed), 
as Celia. Several English actresses have 
assumed Rosalind since the time of Ellen 
Tree — but only one has eclipsed her, the 
late Adelaide Neilson, who was superbly 
beautiful in the part and a vision of dazzling 
glee. Fanny Kemble has often given read- 
ings of As You Like It, but she has not acted 
in it. 

On the British stage Rosalind has been 
played also by Fanny Cooper (Mrs. T. H. 
Lacy), who had the aid of G. V. Brooke as 
Orlando ; Isabella Glyn (Mrs. E. S. Dallas); 
Millicent Palmer ; Jane Elizabeth Vezin 
(Mrs. Charles Young) ; Carlotta Leclercq 
(Mrs. John Nelson) ; Mrs. Rousby ; Mrs. 
Scott-Siddons ; Mary Provost (Mrs. Samuel 
Colville), at the Princess's, London, July 
9, 1861 ; Julia Bennett (Mrs. Barrow) ; Amy 
Sedgewick (Mrs. Goostry) ; Madge Robert- 
son Kendal (Mrs. W. H. Grimston) ; Miss 
Marriott ; Jean Davenport (Mrs. Lander) ; 
Mrs. Langtry ; Miss Marie Litton, and Miss 
Calhoun, At the Shakespeare Memorial 



AS YOU LIKE IT. I55 

theatre, and for the benefit of that institu- 
tion, at Stratford-upon-Avon, Mary Ander- 
son enacted Eosalind, for the first time in 
her life, on August 29, 1885, and afterwards 
she repeated the performance in various 
cities of Great Britain and the United States, 
On the American stage As You Like It 
was acted on July 14, 1786, at the John, 
street theatre. New York, with Mrs. 
Kenna as Rosalind, Ireland records this, 
together with other presentations of the 
comedy in New York prior to 1860, On 
June 21, 1796 it was performed at the 
John street theatre, with Mrs. Johnson as 
Rosalind, Mr. Hodgkinson as Jaques, Mr. 
Hallam as Touchstone, Mr. Cleveland as 
Orlando, Mrs. Cleveland as Celia, and Mrs. 
Brett as Audrey, Mr. Jefferson, grand- 
father of the Jefferson of to-day, enacted 
Le Beau. The famous Park theatre was 
opened with As You Like It, on Monday, 
January 29, 1798. The piece was acted 
only once, however, and the next mention 
of it that occurs in the story of the New 
York stage records its production on Janu- 
ary 8, 1850, at the Astor Place opera house, 
where it was acted for the benefit of the 
American Dramatic Fund Association, with 
Charlotte Cushman as Rosalind, Burton as 



156 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

Touclistone, Hamblin as Jaques, H. Bland 
as Orlando, Chippendale as Adam, Mrs. 
Abbott as Celia, Mrs. J. Gilbert as Au- 
drey, and George Jordan as Le Beau. 
The elder Wallack closed his first sea- 
son at the old Broadway and Broome 
Street house with seven performances of 
As You Like It, ending June 13, 1853, 
himself playing Jaques, with Laura Keene 
as Rosalind, Mrs. Brougham as Audrey, 
Lester Wallack as Orlando, Charles Wal- 
cot as Touchstone, and Blake as Adam. 
At Burton's theatre, which ultimately be- 
came the Winter Garden, this comedy was 
represented on January 29, 1857, for the 
benefit of Julia Bennett Barrow, a bril- 
liant actress in her time, who embodied 
Rosalind and who was a ripe and dashing 
beauty in those days. Burton enacted 
Touchstone on that occasion, Charles Fisher 
was Jaques, and Orlando was performed by 
Mr. Belton — an earnest and picturesque 
actor, now forgotten. Laura Keene chose 
Rosalind for her first character, when she 
opened her theatre at 622 Broadway, on 
November 18, 1856, and the cast then in- 
cluded George Jordan as Orlando, Charles 
Wheatleigh as Touchstone, Dickinson as 
Jaques, Burnett as Adam, Wemyss as the 



AS YOU LIKE IT. I57 

Duke in exile, J. H. Stoddart as Corin, and 
Mrs. Grattan as Audrey. 

On the American stage As You Like It 
was acted more frequently within the thirty 
years from 1860 to 1890 than it was on 
either side of the Atlantic during the preced- 
ing sixty years of this century. Several 
fine casts of its characters might be cited. 
On November 29, 1870 it was acted at Mblo's 
theatre, New York, with the best Orlando 
of the age, Walter Montgomery ; and the 
cast then included E. L. Davenport as 
Jaques, Mark Smith as Adam, Mrs. Scott- 
Siddons as Rosalind, Vining Bowers as 
Touchstone, James Dunn as Amiens, and 
Milnes Levick as Duke Frederick. On May 
2, 1871 a performance of it was given at 
Niblo's with E. L. Davenport as Jaques, 
and C. R. Thorne, Jr., as Orlando. Car- 
lotta Leclercq played Rosalind, for the first 
time in New York, at Booth's theatre, on 
March 25, 1872. The Jaques was D. W. 
Waller ; the Touchstone Robert Pateman. 
Adelaide Neilson played Rosalind, for the 
first time in America, on December 2, 
1872, at Booth's theatre. J. W. Wallack, 
Jr., was Jaques. Fanny Davenport ap- 
peared at Booth's theatre on December 22, 
1877 as Rosalind, with Charles Fisher as 



158 THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

Jaques. Ada Cavendish, who came to 
America in 1878, had not acted Rosalind on 
the English stage, but she assumed the part 
here and was admired in it. Rose Coghlan 
appeared for the first time as Rosalind on 
September 30, 1880, at Wallack's theatre. 
Mrs. Langtry's advent in this part was 
seen at the same theatre on November 13, 
1882. Helena Modjeska assumed it on 
December 11, 1882, at Booth's theatre. 
A performance of As You Like It was 
given in the open air in the grounds 
of the Masconomo House, at Manchester, 
Massachusetts, on August 8, 1887, with 
Rose Coghlan as Rosalind, Osmond Tearle 
as Orlando, Frank Mayo as Jaques, Agnes 
Booth as Audrey, and Stuart Robson as 
Touchstone. This experiment had previ- 
ously been made in England and had met 
with social favour. 

Under the management of Augustin Daly 
by whom it was revived with scrupulous 
care and profuse liberahty, to signalise 
the assumption of Rosalind by Ada Re- 
han, December, 17, 1889, As You Like It 
has been presented at various times and 
places. Mr. Daly's first season as a the- 
atrical manager began on August 16, 1869, 
when he oxjened the Fifth avenue theatre 



AS YOr LIKE IT. 1 59 

in TVenty-foiirtli street. That season con- 
tinned, nntil July 9. 1870, and in tlie conrse 
of it he presented TTventy-five plays, three 
of "which were comedies hy Shakespeare — 
Ticelftk Xight, As You Like It. and Much- 
Ado About Xothing. Mr. Daly's dramatic 
company at that time consisted of thirty- 
three members, including E. L. Davenport. " 
GeoK:e HoUand. "^Villiam Davidge. James 
Lewis. George Clarke. D. H. Harkins. Mrs. 
Gilbert. Fanny Darenport. Agnes Ethel. 
Clara Jennings. Lina Edwin, ]Mrs. Chan- 
frau. and ^Irs. Marie "Wilkins. Eor the 
Shakespeare revival 3ilrs. Scott-Siddons. an 
actress then in the fresh enjoyment of pub- 
lic attention, was engaged as a star. ilrs. 
Scott-Siddons played Eosalind. and so did 
^Irs. Clara Jennings. The name of the former 
had for two years been prominently asso- 
ciated with the part. !Mrs. Scott-Siddons 
made her first appearance on the London 
sta^e on AprO. 8. 1867. at the Haymarket 
theatre, as Rosalind. Her first display of 
the character in America was made in a 
reading that she gave in Xew York, on Oc- 
tober 26. 1868. in. Steinway hall. She first 
acted the part in this country on Xovember 
1-4, at the Boston ^lusetim. and her first 
representation of it in Xew York was given 



l6o THE FOREST OF ARDEN : 

on November 30, 1868, at the New York 
theatre, under the management of Augustin 
Daly. Her star was eclipsed by that of 
Adelaide Neilson, who in her day held 
Rosalind against all competitors. Ellen 
Terry has often been urged to impersonate 
Rosalind, but has declined to undertake it. 
Shakespeare appreciated the value of 
music in association with drama. There 
are songs in Hamlet^ Othello^ King Lear^ 
and Atitomj and Cleopatra. There are 
passages in Macbeth that obviously were 
designed to be chanted. There is need of 
music in the ghost scene in Julius Ccesar 
and in the masquerade scene in Romeo and 
Juliet. There is use of song in King Henry 
IV. and in King Hennj VIII. The come- 
dies abound with music. The Tempest and 
A Midsummer Nighfs Dream are excep- 
tionally rich in strains that must be sung ; 
and songs also occur in The Tim Gentlemen 
of Verona, TJie Merry Wives of Windsor, 
AlVs Well That Ends Well, Much Ado 
About Nothing, Love''s Labour'' s Lost, Meas- 
ure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, A 
Wi7iter''s Tale, Cymbeline, Tivelfth Night, 
and As You Like It. Music has been affili- 
ated with other plays of Shakespeare, but 
with these it was associated by his own 



AS YOU LIKE IT. l6l 

hand. In As You Like It the songs are 
"Under the Greenwood Tree" (Act ii., 
sc. 5) ; "Blow, blow, thou winter wind" 
(Act ii., sc. 7) ; " What shall he have that 
killed the Deer ? " (Act iv., sc. 2) ; "It was 
a lover and his lass " (Act v., sc. 3) ; and 
the verses allotted to Hymen (Act v., sc. 4), 
" Then is there mirth in heaven," and 
" Wedding is great Juno's crown." The 
songs of Hymen, together with all that re- 
lates to that personage,- are usually omitted 
in the representation of this comedy. On 
the other hand, the song that is sung by 
Spring, commonly called the Cuckoo Song, 
in Love's Labour's Lost (Act v., sc. 2), 
" When daisies pied and violets blue," was 
long ago introduced into As You Like It, 
and for many years of stage usage it was 
put into the mouth of Rosalind, immedi- 
ately after the words ' ' O, that woman that 
cannot make her fault her husband's occa- 
sion, let her never nurse her child herself, 
for she will breed it like a fool." The pur- 
pose of that introduction is obscure. The 
effect of it has ever been to smirch the ra- 
diant, gleeful ingenuousness and piquant 
banter of the happy-hearted Rosalind with 
a suggested taint of conscious coarseness. 
The Cuckoo Song, sprightly and felicitous 

L 



l62 THE FOREST OF ARDEN. 

in itself, was set to exceedingly beautiful 
music by Dr. Arne (1710-1778), and it 
appears to have been first introduced into 
As You Like It in 1747, at Drury Lane, to 
have been allotted to Celia, and to have been 
sung by Kitty Clive. At Covent Garden in 
1775 Mrs. Mattocks sang it, and Mrs. Mat- 
tocks played not Rosalind but Celia. The 
first Rosalind that ever sang it vv^as Mrs. 
Dancer, at Drury Lane, in 1767. The airs 
for the Greenwood- Tree and the Winter 
Wind were written by Dr. Arne ; that of 
the Deer Song was written by Sir Henry 
Bishop. It was a Lover and his Lass 
(sung by the Second Page in the original) 
and the verses of Hymen were set to ex- 
quisite melodies by William Linley, and 
these were retained in Daly's arrange- 
ment of the piece. The Pages were kept 
in, and the droll episode of their singing to 
Touchstone was allowed to have its rightful 
effect in displaying still further the quaint- 
ness of that wise, facetious, lovable char- 
acter. Altogether the lovely comedy was 
presented substantially as Shakespeare 
wrote it — in the glad light of early spring- 
time and in one continuous picture of 
sylvan beauty. 



A MIDSUMMER KIGHT'S DKEAM. 1 63 



XII. 

FAIRY LAND ; A MIDSUMMER NIGHT's 
DREAMo 

BECAUSE Shakespeare, who lived only 
fifty -two years, wrote so much within 
that brief period, and furthermore because 
he wrote with such transcendent genius 
and ability, it has pleased theoretical and 
visionary observers to declare that he never 
wrote at all. Shakespeare viewed alone, 
they maintain, is a miracle, and therefore 
an impossibility ; but Shakespeare and 
Francis Bacon, rolled into one, constitute a 
being who is entirely natural and authentic. 
The works of Shakespeare and the works 
of Bacon present, indeed, almost every 
possible point of dissimilarity, and no point 
of resemblance. The man behind Shake- 
speare's plays and poems and the man 
behind Bacon's essays and philosophy are 
absolutely distinct from one another and 
as far apart as the poles. The direct and 
positive testimony of Shakespeare's friend 



164 FAIRY LAND : 

and professional associate, Ben Jonson — a 
close observer, a stern critic, a truth-teller, 
a moralist, not over-amiable in his com- 
mentary upon human nature, and neither 
prone to error nor liable to credulity — tells 
the world, not only that Shakecpeare wrote, 
but in what manner he wrote. The assump- 
tion, implied in the Bacon theory, that a 
poet capable of writing Hamlet^ Macbeth, 
Lear, and Othello either would or could, for 
any reason whatever, wish to escape the 
imputation of their authorship, is obviously 
absurd. The idea that Shakespeare, hired 
by Bacon to father those plays, could for a 
period of years go in and out among the 
actors and the authors of his time, and so 
impose upon their sagacity and elude their 
jealous scrutiny as to keep the secret of this 
gigantic fraud, is simply ludicrous. The 
notion that the man who wrote Shake- 
speare's poems — and those, admittedly, 
were the work of William Shakespeare — 
was the kind of man to lend himself to any 
scheme of imposture is repudiated by every 
intimation of character that those poems 
contain; and the same may rightfully be 
said of the man who wrote Shakespeare's 
plays. The fact that the plays, which these 
theorists would deny to Shakespeare's pen, 



A MIDSUMMER NIGIIT'S DREAM. 1 6$ 

are entirely, absolutely, and incontestably 
kindred with the poems, which they cannot 
deny to it, stands forth as clear as the day- 
light. The associate fact that the plays 
contain precisely such errors as would nat- 
urally be made by the untutored Shake- 
speare, but could not possibly be made by 
the thoroughly taught and erudite Bacon, 
is likewise distinctly visible. Yet, all the 
same — because Shakespeare, like Burns, 
sprung from a family in humble station, 
and was but poorly schooled — this prepos- 
terous doctrine persistently rears its foolish 
head, and insults with idle chatter the 
Shakespearean scholarship of the world. A 
prominent representative dramatist, Dion 
Boucicault, had the astounding folly to 
announce an hypothesis — apparently in- 
tended to be taken in earnest — that Shake- 
speare's Hamlet was written by Jonson, 
Webster, Dekker, and Alleyne, in conjunc- 
tion with Shakespeare, and under his super- 
vision ; a doctrine which, to any student 
acquainted with those writers and their 
times, is deplorably idle. For if there 
be in literature any work which, from the 
first line to the last, and in every word 
and syllable of it, bears the authentic 
pressure of one creative and predominant 



1 66 FAIRY land: 

mind — the broad-headed, arrow of im- 
perial dominion — that work is Hamlet. 
Shakespeare's style, once known, can never 
be mistaken. No man of his time, with the 
single exception of John Fletcher, could 
write in anything like his peculiar strain of 
simplicity and power. In some of the his- 
torical plays there are traces of collabora- 
tion — as all readers know ; but in his 
greater plays the only hand that is visible 
is the hand of Shakespeare. 

This is especially true of A Midsummer 
Nighfs Dream, and probably no better 
mental exercise than the analysis of the 
style and spirit and component elements of 
that piece could be devised for those per- 
sons — if any such there be — who incline 
to entertain either the Bacon theory or the 
collaboration theory of the authorship of 
Shakespeare. Bacon, if his avowed writ- 
ings may be taken as the denotement of 
his mind, could no more have written that 
play than he could have flown on wings of 
paper over the spire of St. Paul's ; nor does 
it exhibit the slightest deviation from one 
invariable poetic mind and temperament. 
Shakespeare's fancy takes a free range here, 
and revels in beauty and joy. The Dream 
was first published in 1600 ; the earliest 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 167 

allusion made to it is that of Francis Meres, 
in Palladis Tamia, in 1598 ; and probably 
it was written as early as 1594, when 
Shakespeare was thirty years old. A sig- 
nificant reference to the subject of it occurs 
in the second scene of the second act of the 
Comedy of Errors (1589-1591), which has 
been thought to indicate that the poet had 
already considered and perhaps conceived 
it : he was working with wise and incessant 
industry at that time, and the amazing fer- 
tility of his creative genius was beginning 
to reveal itself. The Dream is absolutely 
of his own invention. The names of the 
characters, together with a few incidents, 
he derived from Plutarch, Ovid, and Chau- 
cer — authors with whom he shows himself 
to have been acquainted. The story of 
Pyramus and Thisbe occurs in Ovid, and 
a translation of that Latin poet, made by 
Arthur Golding, was current in Shake- 
speare's day. It is thought that the Knight's 
Tale and Tijsbe of Bahylone, by Chaucer, 
may have been the means of suggesting 
this play to Shakespeare, but his story and 
his characters are his own. And although, 
as Dr. Johnson observes, fairies were in his 
time fashionable, and Spenser's Faerie 
Queene had made them great, Shakespeare 



1 68 FAIRY LAND : 

was the first to interblend them with the 
proceedings of mortals in a drama. The 
text of the piece is considered to be excep- 
tionally free from error or any sort of 
defect. Two editions of the Dream, quarto, 
appeared in 1600 — one published by Thomas 
Fisher, bookseller ; the other by James 
Roberts, printer. The Fisher publication 
had been entered at Stationers' Hall, Octo- 
ber 8, that year, and probably it was sanc- 
tioned by the author. The two editions do 
not materially differ, and the modern 
Shakespearean editors have made a judicious 
use of both in their choice of the text. 
The play was not again printed until 1623, 
when it appeared in the first folio. It is 
not known which was first of the Fisher 
and the Roberts quartos, or which was 
authorised. Each of those quartos consists 
of 32 leaves. Neither of them distinguishes 
the acts or scenes. In the first folio 
(1623) the Dream occupies 18 pages, from 
p. 145 to p. 162 inclusive, in the section 
devoted to comedies — the acts, but not the 
scenes, being distinguished. The editors 
of that folio, Heminge and Condell, fol- 
lowed the text of the Roberts quarto. The 
memory of one of the actors who appeared 
in the Dream in its earliest days is curi- 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DHEAM. 1 69 

ously preserved in a stage-direction, printed 
in the first folio, in Act v., sc. i. : " Tawyer 
witli a trumpet." The piece appears in 
the later folios, — 1632, 1663-64, and 1686. 
A Midsummer Nighfs Dream was popular 
in Shakespeare's time. Mention of it, as 
impliedly a play in general knowledge and 
acceptance, was made by Taylor, the water 
poet, in 1622. 

A piece called The Fairy Queen, being 
Shakespeare's comedy, with music by Pur- 
cell, i was published in London in 1692. It 
had been acted there, at the Hay market — 
the presentation being made with fine 
scenery and elaborate mechanism. There 
is another old piece, called The Merry- Con- 
ceited Humours of Bottom the Weaver. 
This was made out of an episode in the 
Dream, and it is included in the collection 
of farces attributed to Robert Cox, a come- 
dian of the time of Charles I. , published in 
1672. A comic masque, by Richard Lever- 
idge, similarly derived, entitled Pyramus 
and Thisbe, "vVas' performed at Lincoln's 
Inn Fields theatre, and was published in 
1716. Two other musical farces, with this 
same title and origin, are recorded — one 

1 Henry Purcell, 1658-1695, and Thomas Purcell, 
1682, were both musical composers. 



170 FAIRY LAND : 

by Mr. Lampe, acted at Covent Garden, 
and published in 1745 ; the other by W. C. 
Oulton, acted at Birmingham, and pub- 
lished in 1798. Garrick made an acting 
copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream — 
adding to the text as well as curtailing it, 
and introducing songs — and this was played 
at Drury Lane, where it failed, and was 
published in 1763. Colman reduced Gar- 
rick's piece to two acts, and called it A 
Fairy Tale, and in this form it was tried at 
Drury Lane, and published in 1764 and 
1777. Colman, however, wrote: "I was 
little more than a godfather on the occasion, 
and the alterations should have been sub- 
scribed Anon." The best production of 
this comedy ever accomplished on the Eng- 
lish stage was that effected by Charles 
Kean, at the Princess's theatre, London, — 
managed by him from August 1850 till 
August 29,. 1859. 

The first performance of A Midsummer 
NighVs Dream given in America occurred 
at the old Park theatre, for the bene- 
fit of Mrs. Hilson, on November 9, 1826, 
Ireland, in his valuable records, has pre- 
served a part of the cast, rescued from a 
mutilated copy of the playbill of that night : 
Theseus, Mr. Lee ; Bottom, Mr. Hilson ; 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. I7I 

Snout, Mr. Placide ; Oberon, Peter Kich- 
ings; Puck, Mrs. Hilson ; Titania, Mrs. 
Sharpe ; Hippolita, Mrs. Stickney ; Hermia, 
Mrs. Hackett. On August 30, 1841 the 
comedy was again revived at that theatre, 
with a cast that included Mr. Fredericks 
as Theseus, W. H. Williams as Bottom, 
Mrs. Knight as Puck, Charlotte Cushman 
as Oberon, Mary Taylor as Titania, Susan 
Cushman as Helena, Mrs. Groves as Hippo- 
lita, Miss Buloid (afterward Mrs. Abbott) 
as Hermia, and William Wheatley as Ly- 
sander. The next revivals came on Febru- 
ary 3 and 6, 1854, at Burton's theatre and 
at the Broadway theatre, rival houses, with 
these casts : 

At Broadway. At Burton's, 

Theseus.... F. B. Conway Charles Fisher. 

Lysander. . .Lannergan George Jordan. 

Demetrius. .Grosvenor' W. H. Norton. 

Egeus Matthews Moore. 

Bottom William Davidge . . . . W. E. Burton. 

Quince Howard T. Johnston. 

Flute Whiting G. Barrett. 

Snug Fisk Russell. 

Snout Henry G. Andrews. 

Puck Viola Crocker Parsloe. 

Oberon Mrae. Ponisi Miss E. Raymond. 

Titania Mrs. Abbott Mrs. Burton. 

Hippolita. . .Mrs. Warren Mrs. J. Cooke. 

Hermia Mrs. Nagle Mrs. Hough. 

Helena A. Gougenbeim Mrs. Buckland. 



172 FAIRY LAND : 

Great stress, in both cases, was laid upon 
Mendelssohn's music. At each house it 
ran for a month. It was not revived in 
New York again until April 18, 1859, when 
Laura Keene brought it forward at her 
theatre, and kept it on till May 28, with 
C. W. Couldock as Theseus, William Eufus 
Blake as Bottom, Miss Macarthy as Oberon, 
Miss Stevens as Helena, Ada Clifton as 
Hermia, and herself as Puck. It was a fail- 
ure. Even Blake failed as Bottom, — an 
acute critic of that period, Edward G. P. 
Wilkins, describing the performance as 
"not funny, not even grotesque, but vul- 
gar and unpleasant." Charles Peters was 
good as Thisbe. The stage version used 
was made by Eichard Grant White. That 
same theatre subsequently became the 
Olympic (not Mitchell's, but the second of 
that name), and there, on October 28, 1867, 
under the management of James E. Hayes 
and the direction of Joseph Jefferson, who 
had brought from London a Grecian pan- 
orama by Telbin, A Midsummer Niglifs 
Dream was again offered, with a cast 
that included G. L. Fox as Bottom, W. 
Davidge as Quince, Owen Marlowe as 
Flute, Cornelia Jefferson as Titania, and 
Clara Fisher as Peasblossom. Telbin' s 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 73 

panorama displayed the country supposed 
to lie between Athens and the forest 
wherein the Fairy Queen and the lovers 
are enchanted and bewitched and the sapi- 
ent Bottom is "translated." Fox under- 
took Bottom, for the first time, and he was 
drolly consequential and stolidly conceited 
in it. Landseer's famous picture of Titania 
and the ass-headed Bottom was copied in 
one of the scenes. Mr. Hayes provided 
a shining tableau at the close. Mendels- 
sohn's music was played and sung, with 
excellent skill and effect — the chief vocal- 
ist being Clara Fisher. Owen Marlowe, as 
Thisbe, gave a burlesque of the manner 
of Rachel. The comedy, as then given, 
ran for one hundred nights — from Octo- 
ber 28, 1867 till February 1, 1868. The 
stage version used was that of Charles 
Kean. 

The next production of A Midsummer 
Niglifs Dream was effected by Augustin 
Daly, at the Grand Opera House, on August 
19, 1873. The scenery then employed 
was of extraordinary beauty — delicate in 
colour, sensuous in feeling, sprightly in 
fancy. Fox again played Bottom. The 
attentive observer of the stage version 
made by Augustin Daly, — and conspicu- 



174 FAIRY LAND : 

ously used by him when he revived the 
piece at liis theatre on January 31, 1888, — 
would observe that much new and effective 
stage business was introduced. The disposi- 
tion of the groups at the start was fresh, and 
so was the treatment of the quarrel between 
Oberon and Titania, with the disappear- 
ance of the Indian child. The moonlight 
effects, in the transition from act second 
to act third, and the gradual assembly 
of goblins and fairies in shadowy mists 
through which the fire-flies glimmered, at the 
close of act third, were novel and beautiful. 
Cuts and transpositions were made at the 
end of the fourth act, in order to close 
it with the voyage of the barge of Theseus, 
through a summer landscape, on the silver 
stream -that rippled down to Athens. The 
third act was judiciously compressed, so 
that the spectator might not see too much 
of the perplexed and wrangling lovers. 
But little of the original text was omitted. 
The music for the choruses was selected 
from various English composers — that of 
Mendelssohn being prescribed only for the 
orchestra. 

The accepted doctrine of traditional 
criticism — a doctrine made seemingly po- 
tent by reiteration — that A Midsummer 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 75 

Nighfs Dream is not for the stage, need 
not necessarily be considered final. Haz- 
litt was the first to insist on that idea. 
"Poetry and the stage," said that famous 
writer, ' ' do not agree well together. The 
attempt to reconcile them, in this instance, 
fails not only of effect, but of decorum. 
The ideal can have no place upon the stage, • 
which is a picture without perspective. 
The imagination cannot sufficiently qualify 
the actual impression of the senses." But 
this is only saying that there are difficul- 
ties. The remark applies to all the higher 
forms of dramatic literature ; and, logically, 
if that doctrine were observed in practice, 
none of the great plays would be attempted. 
A Midsummer Night's Dream, with all its 
ideal spirit, is dramatic ; it ought not to be 
lost to the stage ; and to some extent, cer- 
tainly, the diiSculties can be surmounted. 
In the spirit of a dream the play was writ- 
ten, and in the spirit of a dream it can be 
acted. 

The student of A Midsummer NiglWs 
Dream, as often as he thinks upon that 
lofty and lovely expression of a luxuriant 
and happy poetic fancy, must necessarily 
find himself impressed with its exquisite 
purity of spirit, its affiuence of invention, 



I '](i FAIRY LAND : 

its extraordinary wealth of contrasted char- 
acters, its absokite symmetry of form, and 
its great beauty of poetic diction. The es- 
sential cleanliness and sweetness of Shake- 
speare's mind, unaffected by the gross 
animalism of his time, appear conspicuously 
in that play. No single trait of the piece 
im]3resses the reader more agreeably than 
its frank display of the spontaneous, natu- 
ral, and entirely delightful exultation of 
Theseus and HiiDpolita in their approaching 
nuptials. They are grand creatures, and 
they rejoice in each other and in their per- 
fectly accordant love. Nowhere in Shake- 
speare is there a more imperial man than 
Theseus; nor, despite her feminine impa- 
tience of dulness, a woman more royal 
and more essentially woman-like than Hip- 
polita. It is thought that the immediate 
impulse of that comedy, in Shakespeare's 
mind, was the marriage of his friend and 
benefactor the Earl of Southampton with 
Elizabeth Vernon — which, while it did 
not in fact occur till 1598, was probably 
agreed upon, and had received Queen Eliz- 
abeth's sanction, as early as 1594-95. In 
old English literature it is seen that such a 
theme often proved suggestive of ribaldry ; 
but Shakespeare could preserve the sane- 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 7/ 

tity even while he revelled in the passion- 
ate ardour of love ; and A Midsummer 
Night'' s Dream, while it possesses the rosy- 
glow, the physical thrill, and the melting 
tenderness of such pieces as Herrick's 
Nuptiall Song, is likewise fraught with the 
moral elevation and unaffected chastity of 
such pieces as Milton's Comus. Human 
nature is shown in it as feeling no shame 
in its elemental passions, and as having no 
reason to feel ashamed of them. The at- 
mosphere is free and bracing; the tone 
honest ; the note true. Then, likewise, 
the fertility and felicity of the poet's in- 
vention — intertwining the loves of earthly 
sovereigns and of their subjects with the 
dissensions of fairy monarchs, the pranks 
of mischievous elves, the protective care of 
attendant sprites, and the comic but kind- 
hearted and well-meant fealty of boorish 
peasants — arouse lively interest and keep 
it steadily alert. In no other one of his 
works has Shakespeare more brilliantly 
shown that complete dominance of theme 
which is manifested in the perfect preser- 
vation of proportion. The strands of action 
are braided with astonishing grace. The 
fourfold story is never allowed to lapse 
into dulness or obscurity. There is caprice, 



178 FAIRY land: 

"but no distortion. The supernatural ma- 
chinery is never wrested toward the pro- 
duction of startling or monstrous effects, 
but it deftly impels each mortal personage 
in the natural line of human development. 
The dream-spirit is maintained through- 
out, and perhaps it is for that reason — 
that the poet was living, thinking, writing 
in the free, untrammelled world of his 
spacious and airy imagination and not in 
any definite sphere of this earth — that A 
Midsummer Nighfs Dream is radically 
superior to the other comedies written 
by him at about the same period. The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona^ The Comedy of 
Errors, Love''s Lahour''s Lost, and Tlie 
Taming of the Shrew. His genius over- 
flows in this piece, and the rich excess 
of it is seen in passages of exquisite 
poetry — such as the beautiful speeches of 
Titania and Oberon, in the second act — 
over against which is set that triumph of 
humour, that immortal Interlude of Pyra- 
mus and Thisbe, which is the father of all 
the burlesques in our language, and which, 
for freshness, pungency of apposite satire, 
and general applicability to the foible of 
self-love in human nature and to igno- 
rance and folly in human affairs, might 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 79 

have been written yesterday. The only 
faults in this play are a slight tinge of 
monotony in the third act, concerning the 
lovers in the wood, and an excess of 
rhymed passages in the text throughout. 
Shakespeare had not yet cast aside that 
custom of rhyme which was in vogue when 
he came first upon the scene. But those 
defects are trifles. The beauties overwhelm 
them. It would take many pages to enu- 
merate and fitly to descant on the felicities 

of literature that we owe to this comedy 

gems such as the famous passage on "the 
course of true love"; the regal picture of 
Queen Elizabeth as "a fair vestal throned 
by the west" ; the fine description of the 
stormy summer (that of 1594 in England, 
according to Stow's Chronicle and Dr.' 
Simon Eorman's Diary) ; the vision of 
Titania asleep upon the bank of wild 
thyme, oxlips, and violets; the eloquent 
contrasts of lover, madman, and poet, each 
subdued and impelled by that "strong 
imagination" which "bodies forth the 
forms of things unknown" ; and the won- 
derfully spirited lines on the hounds of 
Sparta, — " with ears that swept away the 
morning dew." In character likewise, and 
in those salutary lessons that the truthful 



l8o FAIEY LAND : 

portraiture of character invariably teaches, 
this piece is exceptionally strong. Helena, 
noble and loving, yet a little perverted 
from dignity by her sexual infatuation ; 
Hermia, shrewish and violent, despite her 
feminine sweetness, and possibly because 
of her impetuous and clinging ardour ; 
Demetrius and Lysander, each selfish and 
fierce in his love, but manly, straightfor- 
ward fellows, abounding more in youth 
and desire than in brains ; Bottom, the 
quintessence of bland, unconscious egotism 
and self-conceit ; and Theseus, the princely 
gentleman and typical ruler — these make 
up one of the most interesting and signifi- 
cant groups that can be found in fiction. 
The self-centred nature, the broad-minded 
view, the magnanimous spirit, the calm 
adequacy, the fine and high manner of 
Theseus, make that character alone the 
inspiration of the comedy and a most 
potent lesson upon the conduct of life. 
Through certain of his people — such as 
Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida^ the Duke 
in Measure for Measure^ and Prospero in 
The Tempest — the voice of Shakespeare 
himself, speaking personally, is clearly 
heard ; and it is heard also in Theseus. 
"The best in this kind are but shadows," 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT's DREAM. l8l 

says that wise observer of life, when he 
comes to speak of the actors who copy it, 
" and the worst are no worse, if imagina- 
tion amend them." There is no higher 
strain of princelike courtesy and consider- 
ate grace, even in the perfect breeding of 
Hamlet, than is visible in the preference of 
Theseus for the play of the hard-handed 
men of Athens : — 

" Never anything can be amiss 
When simpleness and duty tender it. . . . 
And what poor duty cannot do 
Noble respect takes it in might, not merit." 

With reference to the question of suitable 
method in the acting of A Midsummer 
Niglifs Dream it may be observed that too 
much stress can scarcely be laid upon the 
fact that this comedy was conceived and 
written absolutely in the spirit of a dream. 
It ought not, therefore, to be treated as a 
rational manifestation of orderly design. 
It possesses, .indeed, a coherent and sym- 
metrical plot and a definite purpose ; but, 
while it moves toward a final result of abso- 
lute order, it presupposes intermediary prog- 
ress through a realm of motley shapes and 
fantastic vision. Its persons are creatures 
of the fancy, and all effort to make them 



l82 FAIRY LAND : 

solidly actual, to set them firmly upon the 
earth, and to accept them as realities of 
common life, is labour ill-bestowed. To 
body forth the form of things is, in this 
case, manifestly, a difficult task : and yet 
the true course is obvious. Actors who 
yield themselves to the spirit of whim, and 
drift along with it, using a delicate method 
and avoiding insistence upon prosy realism, 
will succeed with this piece — provided, 
also, that their audience can be fanciful, 
and can accept the performance, not as a 
comedy of ordinary life but as a vision seen 
in a dream. The play is full of intimations 
that this was Shakespeare's mood. Even 
Bottom, the consummate flower of uncon- 
scious humour, is at his height of signifi- 
cance in his moment of supreme illusion : 
' ' I have had a dream, — past the wit of 
man to say what dream it was : — Man is 
but an ass if he go about to expound this 
dream. Methought I was — there is no 
man can tell what. Methought I was, and 
methought I had — But man is but a 
patched fool if he will offer to say what me- 
thought I had. The eye of man hath not 
heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's 
hand is not able to taste, his tongue to con- 
ceive, nor his heart to report, what my 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 83 

dream was." The whole philosophy of the 
subject, comically stated, is there. A serious 
statement of it is in the words of the poet 
Campbell : — 

" Well may sleep present us fictions, 
Since our waking moments teem 
With such fanciful convictions 
As make life itself a dream." 

Various actors in the past — although A 
Midsummer NiglWs Dream has not had 
great currency upon the stage, at any period, 
whether in England or America — have laid 
a marked stress upon the character of 
Bottom, Samuel Phelps, upon the London 
stage, was esteemed excellent in it. He 
acted the part in his production of the 
Dream, at Sadler's Wells, and he again 
acted it in 1870 at the Queen's theatre, in 
Long Acre — now demolished. On the 
American stage William E. Burton was ac- 
counted wonderfully good in it. " As Bur- 
ton renders the character," says Eichard 
Grant White, "its traits are brought out 
with a delicate and masterly hand ; its 
humour is exquisite." And William L. 
Keese, in his careful biography of Burton, 
makes equally cordial reference to that 
achievement of the sreat comedian : ' ' How 



184 FAIRY LAND : 

striking it was in sustained individuality, 
and how finely exemplified was the poten- 
tial vanity of Bottom ! What pleased us 
greatly was the vein of engaging raillery 
which ran through the delivery of his 
speeches to the fairies." Burton produced 
the Dream at his theatre, in 1854, with 
such wealth of fine scenery as in those days 
was accounted prodigious. The most nota- 
ble impersonation of Bottom that has been 
given since Burton's time was, proba- 
bly, that of George L. Fox. Self-conceit, 
as the essence of the character, was thor- 
oughly well understood and expressed by 
him. He wore the ass's head, but he did 
not know that he was wearing it ; and when, 
afterward, the vague sense of it came upon 
him for an instant, he put it by as some- 
thing inconceivable and intolerable. His 
" Not a word of me ! " — spoken to the other 
hard-handed men of Athens, after his re- 
turn to them out of the enchanted ' ' palace 
wood " — was his finest single point. Cer- 
tainly it expressed to the utmost the colossal 
self-love and swelling pomposity of this mir- 
acle of bland and opaque sapience. The 
essential need of acting, in a portrayal of 
this play, is whimsicality — but it must be 
whimsicality exalted by poetry. 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 1 85 

It is remarked by Hazlitt that " the stage 
is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the 
world, with the dull part left out" ; and 
the fine thinker adds, with subtle insight 
and quaint wisdom, that "indeed, with this 
omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all 
the rest." There is a profound and signifi- 
cant truth in that observation. Actual life, 
in most of its aspects, is dull and tedious. 
Almost all persons are commonplace — ex- 
cept at moments. Almost all scenes are 
insipid — except at moments. Nature will 
not show herself to you at all times. The 
glory of sunrise is revealed only once in a 
day, and even then you will not see it unless 
you are in the right mood. The uncommon 
element in human creatures must be awak- 
ened before they can really discern any- 
thing. Most persons who have reached 
middle age know absolutely nothing that is 
worth knowing except what they saw dur- 
ing the one brief, sweet, youthful hour when 
they were in love. It is the uncommon ele- 
ment that endows man with perception, and 
it is the uncommon element that makes hu- 
manity interesting. Common life is barren ; 
and sometimes it is worse than barren — 
because the contemplation of it is extremely 
apt to engender a bitter contempt for hu- 



1 86 FAIRY LAND. 

manity, as altogether vacuous, frivolous, 
and trivial. The world of art has no room 
for the commonplace. No properly organ- 
ised mind will ever be contented with a 
photograph if it can get anything better. 
We do not wish to know what people are, in 
their ordinary state. We know, only too 
well, that human nature, in its average con- 
dition, is full of selfishness, envy, malice, 
and greed. There is no circle into which 
any man enters, anywhere, in which he does 
not invariably hear people, sooner or later, 
speaking ill of other people behind their 
backs. Detraction is universal and it» is 
perennial. We do not wish in art, or in 
anything else, to hear the small talk, the 
cackle, the babble of everyday life. Hu- 
manity should be contemplated in its ideal- 
ised aspects. Shakespeare has endured, 
and he will endure forever (not, perhaps, 
upon the stage, from which an effort is 
already in formidable progress to exclude 
him, as being archaic and not contempora- 
neous), because, while absolutely true to 
truth in his reflections of human nature, he 
idealised and transfigured it. 



love's labour's lost. 187 



XIII. 

WILL O' THE wisp: LOVE's LABOUR'S LOST. 

THE subject of this comedy is self-culture 
— a subject that commends itself to the 
attention of young men, and one that has 
frequently been treated by young authors. 
Shakespeare obviously was a young author 
when he wrote Love's Labour'' s Lost; yet 
in this case, while the subject has been 
viewed with youthful enthusiasm, it has also 
been viewed with the intuition of genius. 
The idea of natural development that lies 
imbedded in the structure of this work is 
absolutely sound and true. Mental culti- 
vation is a noble pursuit (so Shakespeare 
seems now to declare), but the nature of 
man is not exclusively intellectual ; it is 
also physical and spiritual ; it comprises 
passions and affections. Man was not 
intended to live a monastic life. Love is in 
this world, as well as Thought, and the 
true conduct of existence will not be ascetic, 
but vital, free, simple, cheerful, and happy. 



l88 WILL O' THE WISP : 

The King of Navarre and his three chosen 
lords, Biron, Longaville, and Dumain — 
who typify at first a favourite theory of 
youth, tlie tlieory of exclusive devotion to 
the ideal — may seclude themselves as care- 
fully as they please ; but they will presently 
find that rebellion flows in their blood, and 
as soon as woman comes upon the scene of 
their retreat — as inevitably she will come 
— their cool, stately, scholastic, but tepid, 
barren, and insincere reserve will be ludi- 
crously broken and defeated. This evi- 
dently is all that the play was intended to 
mean, and this meaning it conveys, inter- 
mingled with satire on certain social foibles 
of Shakespeare's early day, in a forcible, 
direct manner, and in a spirit of pungent 
truth which neither youthful effusiveness 
nor immaturity of style is potent to invali- 
date. As far as he could go without much 
experience Shakespeare went in Love's 
Labour''s Lost. After he had gained his 
experience he went much further ; but it 
was still in the same line — as the student 
sees in Much Ado About Nothing. 

The story of this comedy is pretty and 
pleasing, but the piece does not contain 
many incidents, and the element of action 
in it is less prominent than are the elements 



love's labour's lost. 189 

of poetry and humour. Ferdinand, King of 
Navarre, and his three lords dedicate them- 
selves, for three years, to study. They are 
to dwell alone. They are to be frugal and 
vigilant. They are to refrain from the 
society of ladies. They are to he temperate, 
placid, chaste, pure, and cold. In a word," 
they are to be dedicated to Mind. The 
King of Navarre, however, is obliged to 
receive a visit from the Princess of France, 
who comes to him as an ambassador from 
her royal father, on a political mission, and 
who is accompanied by three of her ladies, 
Eosaline, Maria, and Katharine. These 
are handsome young women, and as soon 
as they invade Navarre's serene retreat the 
four consecrated young men incontinently 
fall in love with them, and each endeavours 
to press his suit in secret. All are thus for- 
sworn, and much merriment is extracted 
from the expedient of making each of them 
betray his secret to the others, until they 
all stand in comic discomfiture together. 
At the last the condemnation of their error 
in making a foolish compact is frankly 
spoken, and in words of signal eloquence 
and beauty, by the wisest and merriest of 
them, Biron (in the old copies of the play 
this name is given as Berowne),who from the 



190 WILL O' THE WISP : 

first has only humoured Navarre's caprice 
for monasticism but has never believed in 
its wisdom. Those lovers are much teased 
and tantalised by the sparkling French 
girls, when their droll predicament is dis- 
closed ; but in each case, happily, the love 
of the youths is reciprocated, and so a com- 
fortable pairing time is seen to be imminent ; 
when suddenly comes news that the royal 
father of the Princess has died. There can 
be no nuptials now, for a year. Love's 
labour is lost. The enamoured King of 
Navarre must prove his fidelity by patience. 
The frolicsome Biron must tend the sick 
for a twelvemonth and show himself some- 
thing better than a farceur, in order to be 
worthy of his Kosaline. In the under plot, 
which is suffused with eccentric humour, the 
fantastical Spaniard, Armado, held in 
amorous captivity by the country wench, 
Jaquenetta, affords a more broadly comical 
illustration of the central truth which ani- 
mates this play. No man can escape from 
the doom of love. 

"Nature her custom holds, 
Let shame say what it will." 

Lovers Labour's Lost is pure invention. 
"The story of it," says Steevens, "has 



LOVE S LABOUR S LOST. I9I 

most of the features of an ancient romance." 
"It would be more correct to say," ob- 
serves Charles Knight, "that it has most 
of the features which would be derived from 
an acquaintance with the ancient romances," 
There was no Ferdinand, King of Navarre, 
and there is no record that any question- 
was ever raised between France and Na- 
varre with reference to possessions in 
Aquitain — the settlement of which is the 
ostensible object of the Princess's visit to 
Ferdinand's court. The scene is laid in 
Navarre. The time is Shakespeare's time ; 
and the piece has, accordingly, to be attired 
for the stage in the styles of raiment pecul- 
iar to the period of Henry IV. of France 
(1553-1610), and Philip II. of Spain (1527- 
1598). The comedy drift in Shakespeare's 
mind, from the outset till the last, is dis- 
tinctly indicated in this piece. Biron and 
Kosaline are the precursors of Benedick 
and Beatrice. Armado is the germ of Mal- 
volio. Jaquenetta is a faint prelude both 
to Maria and Audrey. Dull gives a hint of 
the future Dogberry. In Holofernes, the 
schoolmaster — who foreshadows Sir Hugh 
Evans — some commentators have discov- 
ered a satirical portraiture of John Florio, 
one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, who 



192 WILL O' THE wisp: 

taught Italian in London, and made a dic- 
tionary of that language called A World of 
Words; but no conclusive evidence has 
been adduced to sustain that notion. Holo- 
f ernes is Shakespeare's satire on ridiculous 
pedantry, just as Armado is his satire on 
ridiculous affectation, pomposity, and con- 
ceit. Against those foolish things he places, 
in beautiful contrast, his delicious rural 
melodies — " When daisies pied and^violets 
blue," and " When icicles hang by the wall," 
— and the listener feels indeed that "the 
words of Mercury are harsh after the songs 
of Apollo," 

Fifteen of Shakespeare's thirty-seven 
plays were published in his lifetime, the 
comedy of Lovers Labour'' s Lost being one 
of them. The title of the first edition, 
quarto, is : "A pleasant conceited comedie 
called Loues Labors Lost, As it was pre- 
sented before her Highnes this last Christ- 
mas, Newly corrected and augmented by 
W. Shakespeare. Imprinted at London by 
W. W. for Cutbert Burly, 1598." The 
Highness indicated is Queen Elizabeth 
(1558-1603), and the Christmas that of 
1697, In the first folio of Shakespeare 
(1623) the text of this piece is the text of 
the quarto, allowing for merely accidental 



love's labour's lost. 193 

discrepancies. The errors of the quarto, 
which are numerous, reappear in the folio. 
Heminge and Condell, when they say " we 
have scarce received from him" [Shake- 
speare] "a blot in his papers," are not to 
be taken too hterally. They possibly pos- 
sessed some of Shakespeare's manuscripts 
and they may have used them as "copy" 
for the printer ; but their folio seems to 
show that they must have used as " copy " 
some of the prompt-books of Shakespeare's 
plays, obtained from the theatre — such 
books as may have survived the destructive 
fire at the Globe in 1613 — together with 
several of the early quartos. No one knows 
what has become of Shakespeare's " papers " 
— or, indeed, of the papers of some 
other authors of Shakespeare's time. The 
early quartos exist ; but no prompt-book 
has been found, nor any piece of manu- 
script. It is not unlikely that much if not 
the whole mass of the printer's "copy" 
that was used in setting up the folio of 1623 
was heedlessly dispersed and destroyed in 
the printing-office, after the completion of 
that work. In those days no such care was 
taken, as to matters of this sort, as is ha- 
bitually taken now. The reprint in the 
folio of Love's Labour'' s Lost must cer- 

N 



194 WILL o' THE wisp: 

« 

tainly have been made from the quarto, for 
both contain, m Act v. sc. 2, the lines, 
827 to 832, beginning " You must be purged 
too, your sins are rank" — tliat are, by 
Coleridge and others, judiciously deemed a 
superfluous fragment from the first draft of 
the piece ; and also the lines in Biron's 
speech, in Act iv. sc. 3, that are immedi- 
ately repeated in an altered form. (Lines 
296-317 ; paraphrased in lines 318-354.) i 
The title of the piece is questioned. Some 
editors of the poet call it Love's Labour 
Lost; others prefer Love's Labours Lost; 
and still others declare for Love's L^abour 
is Lost. In the title of the quarto no apos- 
trophe is used. In the folio of 1623 the 
play is called Loues Labour''s Lost. In 
every form the idea remains the same. It 
has been alleged that the fashion of speech 
called Euphuism, which was prevalent in 

1 Capell sagaciously saw that in this speech, from 
" For where would you " to " From whence doth 
spring," and from " For where is any " to " And in 
that vow," are passages which the poet had cancelled 
in the " corrected and augmented " play. The same 
occurs in Richard III., v. 3, and, on a much 
smaller scale, however, in Romeo and Juliet, iii. 
3, iv. 1. — Keightley. — This is another trouble 
for the makers of " cyphers " — as Prof. Rolfe has 
pungently suggested ; for the validity of a " cypher " 
is vitally dependent on a perfectly accurate text. 



love's labour's lost. 195 

polite society in tlie reign of Gloriana (^Eu- 
pheus^ the Anatomy of Wit, by John Lilly, 
was published in 1580 and Eupheus and his 
England in 1581), was the particular object 
of Shakespeare's satire — as indicated in 
the character of Don Adriano de Armado ; 
but it seems more likely that he was writ- 
ing out of a natural, humorous scorn of 
artificiality and pomposity, and with the 
recollection of his early reading still fresh 
in mind. Coleridge — perhaps the wisest 
thinker that ever wrote on Shakespeare — 
says : " It is not unimportant to notice how 
strong a presumption the diction and allu- 
sions of this play afford that, though Shake- 
speare's acquirements in the dead lan- 
guages might not be such as we suppose in 
a learned education, his habits had never- 
theless been scholastic and those of a stu- 
dent. For a young author's first work 
almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits ; 
and his first observations of life are either 
drawn from the immediate employments 
of his youth and from the characters and 
images most deeply impressed on his mind 
in the situation in which those employments 
have placed him, or else they are fixed on 
such objects and occurrences in the world 
as are easily connected with, and seem to 



196 WILL O' THE wisp: 

bear upon, his studies and the hitherto 
exclusive subjects of liis meditations." 

In all examination into the writings of 
Shakespeare the student naturally likes to 
approach as nearly as possible to the per- 
sonality of that wonderful poet. Love's 
Labour''s Lost suggests him as he was at 
the beginning of his career. There is no 
immaturity, indeed, in the mental sub- 
stance of the piece, in its drift of thought, 
in its conviction that no artificial scheme of 
frigid self-denial can withstand the pur- 
poses of nature. ' ' Young blood will but 
obey an old decree." The immaturity is 
mostly in the style, and it is shown in the 
frequency of rhymed passages, in the ca- 
pricious mutations of the verse, and in the 
florid metaphor and the tumultuous senti- 
ment. When completely formed the style 
of Shakespeare, while possessing the flexi- 
bility of the finest- tempered steel, possesses 
also its uniform solidity and strength. 
Throughout much of the language of this 
comedy there is a lack of the power of self- 
knowledge and self-restraint. Parts of the 
text are, indeed, full of sinew and tremu- 
lous with intellectual vitality. No doubt 
the author retouched it when he "newly 
corrected and augmented " the piece for the 



love's labour's lost. 197 

press in 1598 — when he was thirty-four 
years old and In full vigour. Biron's fine 
speech in Act. iv., " Have at ye then, 
affection's men at arms," was probably 
rewritten at that time. Yet parts of the 
text are diffuse and strained, and in the 
contemplation of these the best Shake- 
speare scholars agree that the first draft of 
the comedy must have been written when 
the author was a youth. This view is con- 
firmed by the fact that it is at once senti- 
mental and satirical ; that it deals with that 
extremely ambitious theme, the conduct of 
life ; that it assails conventional affecta- 
tions ; and that it is reformatory in spirit 
and would set matters right. That kind of 
zeal belongs to the springtime of the human 
mind, and it seldom endures. Love's La- 
hour's Lost was probably written as early 
as 1590, and it may well have preceded 
The Two Gentlemen of Vero7ia, which is 
commonly set down as Shakespeare's first 
comedy. He had begun by altering and 
imjDroving older plays — the kind of work 
that he accomplished in that vein being 
exemplified by Pericles^ Titus Andronicus, 
and a portion of Henry VL But he soon 
entered on a pathway exclusively his own. 
He never hesitated to make use of hints 



198 WILL O' THE wisp: 

derived from earlier or from contempora- 
neous works, either histories or fictions ; 
but whatever he touclied was transfigured 
and became new and original in his treat- 
ment of it and in his unique and potent 
style. Love's LahouT''s Lost is entirely 
original. "It is apparently wholly our 
poet's own invention," says the judicious 
Keightley, "as no novel, play, or anything 
else, at all resembling it, has been dis- 
covered." Another and an equally signifi- 
cant fact is that it was the first of his 
published plays that bore on the title-page 
the illustrious name of Shakespeare. 

The eccentric persons who are anxious to 
convince themselves that the works of Shake- 
speare were written by somebody else might 
perhaps be restrained if they would ponder 
a little on these facts. The earliest exist- 
ing mention of Shakespeare by name is a 
mention made in the accounts of the Treas- 
urer of the Chamber, showing that he was 
a member of the Lord Chamberlain's com- 
pany of actors, and that he twice appeared 
with Richard Burbage before Queen Eliza- 
beth, at Christmas 1594 — in his thirty- 
first year. This fact shows his rank as an 
actor. The later mention of him, made by 
Meres in Palladis Tamia, 1598, shows that 



love's labour's lost. 199 

he had also been fertile and successful 
as a dramatic author. ' ' As Plautus and 
Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy 
and Tragedy among the Latines," says 
Meres, " so Shakespeare among the English 
is the most excellent in both kinds for the 
stage : for Comedy, witness his Gentlemen, 
of Verona, his Errors, his Love labors lost, 
his Love labours wonne, his Midsummer's 
night dreame, and liis Merchant of Venice ; 
for Tragedy, his Richard the 2, Richard the 
3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Androni- 
cus, and his Romeo and Juliet." The plays 
thus named must have been produced upon 
the stage prior to 1598. They were accepted, 
not as the work of an unknown, mysterious 
author, but as the work of William Shake- 
speare, then and there present and visible 
and in continual social and professional in- 
tercourse with the actors and writers of the 
time, and with numbers of its great people. 
This period is six years later than Greene's 
malevolent allusion to the "upstart crow," 
' ' in his own conceit the onely Shakescene 
in a country," and to Henry Chettle's se- 
quent apology for having published Greene's 
rancorous and offensive though puerile im- 
pertinence. " I am as sorry," says the pub- 
lisher of the Groatsivorth of Wit, " as if the 



200 WILL O' TPIE WISP : 

original fault had beene my fault, because 
myselfe have scene his demeanour no lesse 
civill than he exelent in the qualitie he pro- 
fesses ; besides divers of worship have re- 
ported his uprightnes of dealing, which 
argues his honesty, and his facetious grace 
in writting, that aprooves his art. ' ' Shake- 
speare was an accomplished and esteemed 
gentleman, an excellent actor, and a felici- 
tous writer (facetious in those days mean- 
ing felicitous) . Meres, mindful of rhetorical 
balance and careless of thoroughness, nam- 
ing six tragedies and six comedies, obviously 
intended to refer to an even number of each 
kind of play : but Shakespeare, prior to the 
date of Palladis Tamia, had not only written 
the works that have been mentioned, but 
had written the Taming of the Shrew and 
the first part of Henry the Fourth. He was 
eminent among the authors of his time — 
well rewarded, prosperous, honoured, and, 
as may be surmised by the reader of Ben 
Jonson's Conversations with Drummond, 
closely observed in all his walks and ways ; 
a man of publicity and distinction — and 
the comedy of Love's Lahour''s Lost had 
helped to make him so. 

In what degree the piece had popularity 
in its immediate day no one now can tell. 



love's labour's lost. 20I 

Its bearing as a local and contemporary 
satire ought to have made it successful. 
The public has always disliked satire and 
satirists, and at the same time has always, 
for a while, followed them and favoured 
them. Its admirably humorous scene of 
the discovery that all the dedicated celi- 
bates are in love, and its subsequent 
sprightly colloquies of raillery in which 
those wooers are chaffed by the merry 
maidens of France, would have pleased 
any audience at any time ; and doubtless 
those merits were appreciated by the gal- 
lants of Gloriana's court. It seems, how- 
ever, soon to have vanished from the stage. 
In his chapiter entitled ' ' Plays Printed But 
Not Acted, Between 1660 and 1830" Ge- 
nest makes the following note on a play 
called The Students^ printed in 1762 : 
"Students, 1762. This is professedly 
Love''s Labour Lost, adapted to the stage, 
but it does not seem to have been ever 
acted. The maker of the alteration, as is 
usual in these cases, has left out too much 
of Shakespeare and put in too much of his 
own stuff. Biron is foolishly made to put 
on Costard's coat ; in this disguise he 
speaks part of what belongs to Costard, 
and is mistaken for him by several of the 



202 WILL O THE WISP: 

characters. The curate and schoolmaster 
are omitted, but one of the pedantic 
speeches belonging to the latter is absurdly 
given to a player. One thing is very hap- 
pily altered : Armado's letter to the King is 
omitted as a letter, and the contents of it 
are thrown into Armado's part. The 
Cuckow Song is transferred from the end of 
the play to the second act, in which it is 
sung by Moth. It is now usually sung in 
As You Like It. Steevens, in a note on 
the third act of the original play, observes 
that in many of the old comedies the songs 
are frequently omitted. On this occasion 
the stage direction is generally. Here they 
sing, or cantant. Probably the performer 
was left to the choice of his own ditty. 
Sometimes yet more was left to the discre- 
tion of the ancient comedians. Thus, in 
Greene's Tu Quoque, ' Here they two talk 
and rail what they list.' Steevens gives 
other similar instances." 

When Shakespeare first arrived in Lon- 
don (1585-86) only two notable public 
playhouses were open in that city. Those 
were the Theatre, managed by his towns- 
man James Burbage, in Finsbury Field, 
and the Curtain, in Shoreditch. Both are 
mentioned by Stow (1525-1605), and both 



love's labour's lost. 203 

certainly existed as early as 1583. The 
Blackfriars (erected in 1570) was a private 
theatre ; but it seems to have hecome a 
public one in 1597. The Globe was opened 
m 1599, and it was burnt down on June 29, 
1613. The Rose was opened by Henslowe, 
in February 1591, "on the Bancksyde '■' 
— that is, at Southward. Most of Shake- 
speare's plays were originally produced at 
one or another of those theatres. It is 
probable that the first performance of 
Love's Labour's Lost occurred at the Rose ; 
though it may have been at the Curtain. 

In all the long annals of the British and 
American drama there is but scant record 
of any considerable revivals of this comedy. 
It was performed in London, at Covent 
Garden, in September 1839, when Eliza 
Vestris acted Rosaline and the beautiful 
Louisa Msbett acted the Princess of France. 
That earnest, intrepid, thorough actor, 
Samuel Phelps, revived it at Sadler's Wells, 
London, in 1857. It was included by Charles 
Edward Flower in his tasteful and useful 
edition of Shakespeare's plays prepared for 
representation in the Memorial theatre at 
Stratford-upon-Avon. It was presented at 
the Arch Street theatre, Philadelphia, in 
1858, but that revival seems to have been 



204 WILL O THE WISP: 

one of transient value. The first practically 
auspicious reproduction of it that the stu- 
dent comes upon, in modern theatrical 
chronicles, is that made by Augustin Daly, 
when his theatre (then called the Fifth 
Avenue) was in Twenty-eighth street. New 
York, on February 21, 1874. It had not 
until then been acted on the New York 
stage, and after that it slumbered for seven- 
teen years, till revived by the same man- 
ager, on March 28, 1891, with Ada Rehan 
as the Princess. 

The careful student of Shakespeare's 
methods will not fail to observe that in 
Love's Laboufs Lost the poet has taken 
the same course that he pursues in A Mid- 
S2immer Night's Dream, and also that in 
this early comedy he presages the form of 
all his later ones. In both the Dream and 
the Labour the persons who are distinc- 
tively humorous conjoin at last in giving 
an entertainment of a dramatic character, 
in the presence of royalty and nobility. In 
the former we have Pyramus and Thisbe ; 
in the latter the Pageant of the Nine Wor- 
thies. By this device the poet effects the 
most ample disclosure of his eccentric peo- 
ple — showing more fully what they are by 
making them show what they think them- 



love's labour's lost. 205 

selves to be. The humorous part of Love's 
Labour's Lost is the richest part of it. The 
vein of quaint, quizzical, fantastic drollery 
in Shakespeare's nature showed itself early 
to be deep and rich, and his wonderful com- 
mand of humorous phraseology was also 
brilliantly shown in that piece. The in- 
tensely English character of the man, 
together with his complete carelessness of 
accurate and formal scholarship — a quali- 
fication which he did not possess, and 
which he would not have regarded even if 
he had possessed it — are also visible in the 
humorous part of Love's Lahour''s Lost. 
Every point, howsoever slight, has to be 
considered in the study of an author about 
whose personality our chief information 
has necessarily to be derived from the 
analysis of his mind. The fact that into 
Love''s Labour's Lost., although the scene is 
laid in Navarre, the poet introduced such 
names and persons as Costard, Dull, and 
Moth is, therefore, not devoid of signifi- 
cance. In arranging Zone's Labour's Lost 
for the stage the editor condensed it, 
and blended the third act, which in the 
original is very short, with the essential 
portions of the fourth. Allusion to the 
death of the Erench king was also omitted, 



2o6 WILL O' THE WISP. 

and the imposition of a penance of one year 
of waiting was, presumably, ascribed to a 
sense, on the part of the Princess, that it is 
expedient and will prove salutary. The 
pageant was transposed to the end of the 
comedy, which closed with one of the sweet- 
est of the Shakespeare melodies and left 
its spectator with a mental vision of all 
the lovely flowers that grow on Avon's 
banks. 



Shakespeare's shuew. 207 



XIV. 
Shakespeare's sheew. 

A PLAY entitled TJie Taming of a Shrew 
was published in London in 1594. It 
had been for some time extant and had 
been " smidry times " acted by the players 
who were in the service of the Earl of Pem- 
broke. The authorship of it is unknown ; 
but Charles Knight ascribes it to Robert 
Greene (1561-1692) — that dissolute ge- 
nius, who is now chiefly remembered as the 
detractor of Shakespeare and as the first 
English poet that ever wrote for bread. 
The German commentator Tieck supposes 
it to be a juvenile production by Shake- 
speare himself ; but this is a dubious the- 
ory. It is certain, however, that Shake- 
speare was acquainted with that piece, and 
it is believed that in writing The Taming of 
the Shrew he either co-laboured with an- 
other dramatist to make a new version of 
the older play, or else that he augmented 
and embellished a new version of it which 



2o8 SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW. 

had already been made by another hand. 
In 1594 he was thirty years old, and he 
had been about eight years in London the- 
atrical life. Edward Dowden thinks that 
Shakespeare's portion of this task was 
performed in 1597. The Taming of the 
Shrew was acted, by his associates, at 
the Blackfriars theatre, at the theatre at 
Newington Butts — which the Shakespeare 
players occupied while the Globe theatre 
was being built — and finally at the Globe 
itself. He never claimed it, however, as 
one of his works, and it was not published 
until after his death. It first appeared in 
the folio of 1623. 

Keightley describes The Taming of the 
Shrew as " a rif acimento of an anonymous 
play," and expresses the opinion that its 
style " proves it to belong to Shakespeare's 
early period." Collier maintains that 
" Shakespeare had little to do with any 
of the scenes in which Katherine and Pe- 
truchio are not engaged." Dr. Johnson, 
comparing the Shakespearean play with its 
predecessor, remarks that " the quarrel in 
the choice of dresses is precisely the same ; 
many of the ideas are preserved without 
alteration ; the faults found with the cap^ 
the gown, the compassed cape, the trunk 



Shakespeare's shrew. 209 

sleeves^ and the balderdash about taking up 
the goion, have been copied, as well as the 
scene in which Petruchio makes Katherine 
call the sun the moon. The joke of address- 
ing an elderly gentleman as a ' yomig, bud- 
ding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,' 
belongs also to the old drama ; but in this 
instance it is remarkable that, while the 
leading idea is adopted, the mode of ex- 
pressing it is quite different." 

Richard Grant White says : " The plot, the 
personages, and the scheme of the Induction 
are taken from the old play, which, how- 
ever, is as dull as this is in most points 
spirited and interesting. In (this play) 
three hands at least are traceable ; that of 
the author of the old play, that of Shake- 
speare himself, and that of a co-labourer. 
The first appears in the structure of the 
plot and in the incidents and the dialogue 
of most of the minor scenes ; to the last 
must be assigned the greater part of the 
love business between Bianca and her two 
suitors ; while to Shakespeare himself be- 
long the strong, clear characterisation, 
the delicious humour, and the rich verbal 
colouring of the recast Induction, and all 
the scenes in which Katherine, Petruchio, 
and Grumio are prominent figures, together 
o 



210 Shakespeare's shrew. 

with the general effect produced by scat- 
tering lines and words and phrases here 
and there, and removing others elsewhere, 
throughout the play." 

It is evident from these testimonies that, 
whether Shakespeare recast and rewrote 
his own work, — as Tieck supposes, and as 
he seems to have done in the case of Ham- 
let^ — or whether he furbished up the work 
of somebody else, the comedy of The Tam- 
ing of the Shrew that stands in his name 
is largely indebted, for structure, to its 
predecessor on the same subject. Both 
plays owe their plot to an ancient source. 
The scheme of the Induction — a feature 
common to both — is found as an old his- 
toric fact in The Arabian Nights^ in the 
tale of The Sleeper Aioakened. Shakespeare 
did not know that work ; but this tale of im- 
posture — said to have been practised upon 
Abu-1-Hassaii, "the wag," by the Kha- 
leef eh Er-Kasheed — originating in remote 
oriental literature, and repeated in various 
forms, may have been current long before 
his time. In that narrative Abu-1-Hassan 
is deluded into the idea that he is the Prince 
of the Faithful, and, as that potentate, he 
commands that much gold shall be sent to 
Hassan's mother, and that punishment 



SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW. 211 

shall be inflicted upon certain persons by 
whom Hassan has been persecuted. 

A variation of this theme occurs in Gou- 
lart's Admirable and Memorable Histories^ 
translated into English by E. Grimestone, 
in 1607. In this it is related that Philip, 
Duke of Burgundy, called the Good, found 
a drunken man asleep in the street, at Brus- 
sels, caused him to be conveyed to the 
palace, bathed and dressed, entertained by 
the performance of " a pleasant comedy," 
and at last once more stupefied with wine, 
arrayed in ragged garments, and deposited 
where he had been discovered, there to 
awake, and to believe himself the sport of 
a dream. Malone, by whom the narrative 
was quoted from Goulart, thinks that it had 
appeared in English prior to the old play of 
The Taming of a Shrew^ and consequently 
was known to Shakespeare. 

Another source of his material is Ariosto. 
In 1587 were published the collected works 
of George Gascoigne. Among them is a 
prose comedy called The Supposes — a 
translation of Ariosto' s ISuppositi, in which 
occur the names of Petrucio and Licio, and 
from which, doubtless, Shakespeare bor- 
rowed the amusing incident of the Pedant 
personating Vincentio. Gascoigne, it will 



212 SHAKESPEAEE'S SHREW. 

be remembered, is the old poet to whom Sir 
Walter Scott was indebted, when he wrote 
his magnificent novel of Kenilworth — so 
superb in pageantry, so strong and various 
in character, so deep and rich in passion, 
and so fluent in style and narrative power 

— for description of the revels with which 
Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth in 
1575. 

In versification the acknowledged Shake- 
spearean comedy is much superior to the 
older piece. The Induction contains pas- 
sages of felicitous fluency, phrases of delight- 
ful aptness, that crystalline lucidity of style 
which is characteristic of Shakespeare, and 
a rich vein of humour. Those speeches 
uttered by the Lord have the unmistakable 
Shakespearean ring. The character of 
Christopher Sly likewise is conceived and 
drawn in precisely the vein of Shake- 
speare's usual English peasants. Hazlitt 
justly likens him to Sancho Panza. The^ 
Warwickshire allusions are also significant 

— though Greene as well as Shakespeare 
was a Warwickshire man ; but some of the 
references are peculiar to the second comedy, 
and they inevitably suggest the same hand 
that wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor. 
"Burton Heath" may be Barton- on- the- 



Shakespeare's spirew. 213 

Heath, a village situated about two miles 
from Long Compton. Knight, citing Dug- 
dale, points out that in Doomsday -Book the 
name of this village is written "Bertone," 
Shakespeare's own beautiful native shire — 
as his works abundantly show — was con- 
stantly in his mind when he wrote. It is 
from the region round about Stratford-upon- 
Avon that he habitually derives his climate, 
his foliage, his flowers, his sylvan atmos- 
phere, and his romantic and always ef- 
fective correspondence between nature's 
environment and the characters and deeds 
of humanity. Only Sir Walter Scott, 
Wilkie Collins, and Thomas Hardy, since 
his time, have conspicuously rivalled him in 
this latter felicity ; and only George Eliot 
and Thomas Hardy have drawn such Eng- 
lish peasants as his. " Ask Marion Hacket, 
the fat ale-wife of Wincot," is another of 
the "Warwickshire allusions ; Wincot may 
mean Wilmcote — which Malone says was 
called Wyncote — where lived Mary Arden, 
the mother of Shakespeare, in that venera- 
ble, weather-beaten structure, in the parish 
of Aston Cantlow, about four miles north- 
west of Stratford. And there is a Wincot 
near the village of Clifford, a few miles to 
the south. 



214 Shakespeare's shrew. 

The version of Tlie Taming of the Shrew 
which for many years has been used on the 
stage, in one form or another, is the version, 
in three acts, that was made by Garrick, 
produced at Drury Lane, and published in 
1756, under the name of Katherine and Pe- 
truchio. That version omits several scenes 
and transposes other parts of the original. 
An alteration of Garrick' s piece, made and 
long used by Edwin Booth, was published 
in 1878, with a preface and notes by the 
present writer. Booth's version is in two 
acts, and it has been adopted by several 
other actors. Neither the Garrick nor the 
Booth book includes The Induction or the 
under-plot relative to the love of Hortensio 
and Bianca. From the beginning of Amer- 
ican stage history until the time of Augustin 
Daly's revival of it, January 18, 1887, with 
Ada Rehan in her superb and matchless 
embodiment of Katherine, The Taming 
of the Shrew had never been presented 
here as Shakespeare wrote it. That ex- 
quisite actress Marie Seebach, when she 
visited America in 1870, produced it, in the 
German language, under the name of Die 
Widerspenstige, in a four-act version, cut 
and changed ; but that did not include the 
Induction. 



Shakespeare's shrew. 215 

On the English stage this comedy has 
been the parent of several popular plays. 
Aside from its rattling fun the subject 
itself seems to possess a particular in- 
terest for those Britons whose chief article 
of faith is the subordination of woman 
to man. Long ago it became a settled • 
principle of the common law of England 
that a man may beat his wife with a stick 
not thicker than his thumb. The duck- 
ing stool — a chair affixed to the end of a 
beam, which rested on a pivot, and so 
arranged that the culprit, bound into it, 
could be repeatedly soused in a pond or 
river — was used in England, to punish 
a scolding woman, as late as 1809. John 
Taylor, the water-poet, counted sixty whip- 
ping-posts within one mile of London, prior 
to 1630, and it was not till 1791 that the 
whipping of female vagrants was forbidden 
by statute. The brank, a peculiar and 
cruel kind of gag, formerly in common use, 
has been employed to punish a certain sort 
of women within the memory of persons 
still alive. Thackeray's caustic ballad of 
Damages Tvjo Hundred Pounds affords an 
instructive glimpse of the view that has 
been taken, by British law, of masculine 
severity toward women. It is not meant 



2i6 Shakespeare's shrew. 

that the gentlemen of England are tyranni- 
cal and cruel in their treatment of the 
women ; far from it ; but that the predomi- 
nance of John Bull, in any question between 
himself and Mrs. Bull, is a cardinal doctrine 
of the English law, and that plays illustra- 
tive of the application of discipline to 
rebellious women have found favour with 
the English audience. 

Sawney the Scot, by John Lacy, acted at 
Drury Lane and published in 1698, is an 
alteration of The Taming of the Shreio and 
is not so good a play ; yet it had success. 
Another play derived from this original is 
The Cobbler ofF^'eston., by Charles Johnson, 
a two-act farce, acted at Drury Lane and 
published in 1716, A piece, by Christopher 
Bullock, having the same title, was acted 
at the same time at Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
Both seem to have been well received. 
John Fletcher's JRule a Wife and have a 
Wife (1640) is perhaps the most notable 
type of the popular plays of this class. In 
that piece Leon pretends meekness and 
docility, in order to win Margarita, and 
presently becomes imperative for the con- 
trol of her. Garrick used to personate 
Leon, in an alteration of the comedy attrib- 
uted to his own hand. It is worthy of 



SHAKESPEARE'S SHREW. 21/ 

note that Fletclier, whose views of women 
are somewhat stern and severe (he was the 
son of that Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, 
who troubled the last moments of Mary 
Stuart by his importunate religious exhor- 
tations to her upon the scaffold at Fotherin- 
gay Castle), nevertheless wrote a sequel to- 
The Taming of the Shrew, in which Petru- 
chio reappears, Katherine being dead, with 
a new wife, by whom he is henpecked and 
subdued. This is entitled The Woman's 
Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, and it was 
printed in 1647. John Tobin's comedy of 
The Honeymoon (1805), based on ideas 
derived from Shakespeare, Fletcher, and 
Shirley, portrays a husband's conquest of 
his wife's affections by personal charm, 
irradiating manliness and firmness of char- 
acter ; and this piece is deservedly held in 
esteem. Petruchio's method is to meet 
turbulence with still greater turbulence, 
remaining, however, entirely good-natured 
throughout the stormiest paroxysms of 
violence, till at last his boisterous, kindly, 
rough, sinewy vigour and clamorous tu- 
mult overwhelm Katherine and disgust her 
with the exaggerated image of her own 
faults. 

The scene of the Induction is obviously 



2i8 Shakespeare's shrew. 

Warwickshire ; that of the main action 
of the comedy at Padua, and at the coun- 
try-house of Petruchio — who comes to 
Padua from Verona. The period indicated 
is the sixteenth century, about the year 
1535. The time supposed to be occupied 
by the action is four days. The name of 
Shakespeare's shrew is Katharina Minola. 
The Induction presents the only oppor- 
tunity that Shakespeare's works afford for 
showing English costume of his own time. 
The Italian dresses required for the piece 
are of styles such as were contemporaneous 
with the poet. An actor named Sincklo, 
who is mentioned in the quarto edition of 
Henry IV., Part Second, and also in Henry 
VI., Part Third, is supposed to have acted 
in The Taming of the Shrew, as well as in 
those two histories — for the reason that a 
reference to him occurs in the old play. 
The line "I think 'twas Soto that your 
honour means " was originally given to 
Sincklo. It has long been customary, in 
acting this piece, to present Curtis, a 
serving-man in the original, as an old 
woman ; and to allot two or three words of 
speech to the servants who are named by 
Grumio, in his deprecatory appeal to his 
master, in the arrival scene. 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 2I9 



XV. 

A MAD WORLD : ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 

WHATEVER else may be said as to the 
drift of the tragedy of Antony and 
Cleopatra \ this certainly may with truth be 
said, that to strong natures that sicken 
under the weight of convention' and are 
weary with looking upon the littleness of 
human nature in its ordinary forms^ it af- 
fords a great and splendid, howsoever tem- 
porary, relief and refreshment. The winds 
of power blow through it ; the strong 
meridian sunshine blazes over it ; the col- 
ours of morning burn around it ; the trum- 
pet blares in its music ; and its fragrance 
is the scent of a wilderness of roses. 
Shakespeare's vast imagination was here 
loosed upon colossal images and imperial 
splendours. The passions that clash or 
mingle in this piece are like the ocean 
surges — fierce, glittering, terrible, glorious. 
The theme is the ruin of a demigod. The 
adjuncts are empires. Wealth of every 



220 A MAD WORLD : 

sort is poured forth witli regal and limitless 
profusion. The language glows with a 
prodigal emotion . and towers to a superb 
height of eloquence. It does not signify, 
as modifying the effect of all this tumult 
and glory, that the stern truth of mortal 
evanescence is suggested all the way ! and 
simply disclosed at last in a tragical wreck 
of honour, love, and life. While the pag- 
^ eant endures 4t endures in diamond light, 
and when it fades and crumbles ,the change 
is instantaneous to darkness and death. 

" The odds is gone, 
And there is nothing left remarkable 
Beneath the visiting moon." 

There is no need to inquire whether 
Shakespeare — who closely followed Plu- 
tarch, in telling the Roman and Egyptian 
story — has been true to the historical 
fact. His characters declare themselves 
with absolute precision and they are not to 
be mistaken. Antony and Cleopatra are 
in middle life, and the only possible or ad- 
missible ideal of them is that which sepa- 
rates them at once and forever from the 
gentle, puny, experimental emotions of 
youth, and invests them with the devel- 
oped powers and fearless and exultant pas- 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 221 

sions of men and women to whom the 
world and life are a fact and not a dream. 
They do not palter. For them there is 
but one hour, which is the present, and one 
life, which they will entirely and absolutely 
fulfil. They have passed out of the mere 
instinctive life of the senses, into that more 
intense and thrilling life wherein the senses 
are fed and governed by the imagination. 
Shakespeare has filled this wonderful play 
with lines that tell unerringly his grand 
meaning in this respect — lines that, to 
Shakespearean scholars, are in the alphabet 
of memory : — 

" There's beggary in the love that can be reck- 
oned." 

"There's not a minute of our lives should 
stretch 
Without some pleasure now." 

" Let Kome in Tiber melt and the wide arch 
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my 

space! " 

" O, thou day of the world, 
Chain mine armed neck! Leap thou, attire 
and all, 



222 A MAD WORLD : 

Through proof of harness, to my heart and 

there 
Ride on the pants triumphant." 

*' Fall not a tear, I say! one of them rates 
All that is won and lost. Give me a kiss ; 
Even this repays me." 

Here is no Orsino, sighing for the music 
that is the food of love ; no Romeo, taking 
the measure of an unmade grave ; no Ham- 
let lover, bidding his mistress go to a nun- 
nery. You may indeed, if you possess the 
subtle, poetic sense, hear, through this 
voluptuous story, the faint, far-off rustle of 
the garments of the coming Nemesis ; the 
low moan of the funeral music that will 
sing those imperial lovers to their rest — 
for nothing is more inevitably doomed than 
mortal delight in mortal love, and no mor- 
alist ever taught his lesson of truth with 
more inexorable purpose than Shakespeare 
uses here. But in the meantime it is the 
present vitality and not the moral implica-) 
tion of the subject that actors must be con- 
cerned to show, and observers to recognise 
and comprehend, upon the stage, if this 
tragedy is to be rightly acted and rightly 
seen. Antony and Cleopatra are lovers, 



ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 223 

but not lovers only. It is the splendid 
stature and infinite variety of character in 
them that render them puissant in fascina- 
tion. Each of them speaks great thoughts 
in great language. Each displays noble 
imagination. Each becomes majestic in 
the hour of danger and pathetically heroic 
in the hour of death. The dying speeches 
of Antony are in the highest vein that 
Shakespeare ever reached ; and, when you 
consider what is implied • as w^ll as what is 
said, there is nowhere in him a more lofty 
line than Cleopatra's 

" Give me my robe, put on my crown ; I have 
Immortal longings in me ! " 

Antony at the last is a ruin, and like a 
ruin — dark, weird, grim, lonely, haggard 

be seems to stand beneath a cold and 

lurid sunset sky, wherein the black clouds 
gather, while the rising wind blows merci- 
less and terrible over an intervening waste 
of rock and desert. Those images indicate 
the spirit and atmosphere of Shakespeare's 
conception. 



224 SHERIDAN AND THE 



XVI. 

SHERIDAN AND THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 

ALTHOUGH genius is elemental, and 
therefore is not created by circum- 
stances, it is certain that circumstances 
exert an important influence upon its drift 
and upon the channels and methods of its 
expression. Sheridan — whose father was 
an actor and whose mother was a drama- 
tist, and who was born at Dublin in 1751, 
and trained at Harrow School from 1762 
till 1769, when he went to reside with his 
father at Bath — came upon the scene 
at a period when English society was in 
an exceedingly artificial condition ; and 
this prevalent artificiality of manners, as 
experience subsequently proved, was des- 
tined to increase and to prevail during the 
whole of his career (he died in 1816), and 
not to decline until after the death of 
George IV. in 1830. When Sheridan went 
to reside at Bath he was in his nineteenth 
year ; a remarkably handsome youth ; ar- 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 225 

dent and impressible ; and Batli was then 
one of the gayest cities in the British king- 
dom. In that brilliant city and in that 
opulent, insincere, tattling, backbiting so- 
ciety — intermittently, but most of the time 
— he lived during the perilous years of his 
youth, from 1770 to 1776 ; there he loved 
and won for a wife the beautiful Eliza 
Linley — eloping with her to France, and 
lighting duels in her defence when he came 
back ; there he wrote The Bivals and The 
Duenna, and there he planned and partly 
executed the School for Scandal. Into 
The Rivals he wrought much of his per- 
sonal experience, duly and artistically 
modified and veiled. Into the School for 
Scandal he wrought the results of his 
observation — working in a manner essen- 
tially natural to his order of mind, yet one 
that was to some extent guided and im- 
pelled by the study of Etherege, Wycher- 
ley, Earquhar, Vanbrugh, and Congreve, 
who are his intellectual ancestors. There 
is more freedom, more freshness of im- 
pulse, more kindness, more joy, more 
nature in The Bivals than there is in the 
School for Scandal ; but both are artificial ; 
both reflect, in a mirror of artistic exagger- 
ation, the hollow, feverish, ceremonious, 
p 



226 SHERIDAN AND THE 

bespangled, glittering, heart-breaking fash- 
ionable world, in which their author's mind 
was developed and in which they were 
created. The School for Scandal^ indeed, 
is completely saturated with artificiality, 
and the fact that it was intended to satirise 
and rebuke the faults of an insincere, scan- 
dal-mongering society does not — and was 
not meant to — modify that pervasive and 
predominant element of its character. 

Satire, in order to be effective, must 
portray the thing that it excoriates. The 
School for Scandal rebukes a vice by de- 
picting it, and makes the rebuke pungent 
by depicting it in a brilliant and entertain- 
ing way ; yet there is no considerable com- 
edy in our language, not even one by 
Etherege or by Congrevei — authors whose 

1 The student of the comedies of Sheridan is 
aided in his appreciation of their quality, their 
spirit, their peculiar excellence, by a preliminary 
study of Etherege, Wycherley, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, 
and Congreve. The intellectual line represented by 
those writers closed with Sheridan. No successor 
has arisen, although of imitators there have been 
scores. Sir George Etherege (1636?-1689) wrote 
The Comical Revenge (1664), She Would if She 
Could (1668), and The Man of Mode, or Sir Fop- 
ling Flutter (1676). "William Wycherley (1640- 
1715) wrote, between 1672 and 1677, Love in a Wood, 
The Gentleman Dancing -Master, The Country 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 227 

influence was naturally and cogently oper- 
ative upon the kindred mind of Sheridan — 
that stands further off from the simjDlicity 
of nature, moves in a more garish light, or 
requires for its intelligible and effective 
interpretation a more studied, manufac- 
tured, fantastic manner. It contains no 
person upon whom the imagination can dwell 
with delight, or to whom the heart can be- 
come devoted ; no person who either fires the 
mind by example, or arouses the imagina- 
tion by romantic nobility, or especially 

Wife, and TJie Plain-Dealer. Moore found it diffi- 
cult to believe that Sheridan was unfamiliar with the 
last of these pieces; it is extremely probable that he 
had a cursory knowledge of them all. George Far- 
quhar (1678-1707) wrote Love and a Bottle (1699), 
Tlie Constant Couple (1700), Sir Harry Wildair 
(1701), The Inconstant (1702), The Twin Rivals 
(1703), The Stage Coach (1705), in which he was 
assisted by Peter A. Motteux (1660-1718), The Re- 
cruiting Officer (1705), and The Beaux Stratagem 
(1707). Sheridan had the same Irish grace that is 
found in Farquhar, but he more closely resembles 
Congreve in terseness and glitter. Sir John Van- 
brugh (1666?-1726) wrote The Relapse (1697), The 
Provoked Wife (1697), ^Esop (1697), TJie Pilgrim 
(1700), Tlie False Friend (1702), The Confederacy 
(1705), The Mistake (1706), The Cuckold in Conceit 
(1706), The Country Hoxise (1715), and A Journey 
to London (1728). Sqxiire Trelooby (1734) is also at- 
tributed to him. Vanbrugh wrote with more appar- 
ent facility than either of the others in this group. 



228 SHERIDAN AND THE 

wins esteem whether for worth of character 
or excellence of conduct. Once or twice 
indeed — as in Charles's impulsive expres- 
sion of grateful sentiment toward the boun- 
teous uncle whom he supposes to be absent 
from the scene of the auction, and in Sir 
Peter Teazle's disclosure to Joseph of his 
considerate intentions toward his volatile 
wife, in the scene of the screen — it imparts 
a transient thrill of feeling. But it never 
strikes — and, indeed, it never aims to 
strike — the note of pathos, in its por- 

and his language is more flexible, more like the lan- 
guage of actual men and women, than that of the 
rest. William Congreve (1670-1729) wrote The Old 
Bachelor (1693), The Double- Dealer (1694), Love 
for Love (1695), The Mourning Bride (1697), The 
Way of the World (1700), The Judgment of PariSy 
a Masque (1701), and Semele (1707). Moore notes 
the significant fact that the best comedies have 
generally been written by young authors. All of 
Congreve's pieces were written before he was 
twenty-five. Farquhar died at thirty. Vanbrugh 
began early. Sheridan at twenty-seven had written 
The School for Scandal, and he never surpassed it; 
indeed, practically, he wrote no more for the stage 
— for Pizarro and The Stranger (which substan- 
tially are his) are scarcely worth remembrance. 
But the reason why good comedies may be written 
by clever young men is not obscure. Comedy must 
necessarily treat of society and manners, and this 
subject, which ceases to be interesting as men grow 
old, is for youth a delightful inspiration. 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 229 

traiture of human life ; so that, in the main, 
it contains scarcely a single trait of simple 
humanity. And yet its fascination is uni- 
versal, indomitable, irresistible, final — the 
fascination of buoyant, intellectual char- 
acter, invincible mirth, pungent satire, 
and a gorgeous affluence of j)olished wit.- 
It succeeded when it was first produced, 
and now, after the lapse of a hundred 
years and more, it still continues to please, 
equally when it is acted and when it is 
read. There is a moral in this which 
ought to carry comfort to those votaries of 
art who believe in symbol rather than in 
fact, the ideal rather than the literal ; who 
know that a dramatic picture of life, in 
order that it may be made universal in its 
applicability and incessant in its influence, 
must be made to present aggregate and 
comprehensive personifications and not local 
and particular portraits, and must be painted 
in colours that are not simply true but deli- 
cately exaggerated. This is the great art 
— the art which has made Shakespeare to 
survive when Ben Jonson is dead. The 
absence of genial emotion — of the glow of 
expansive humanity and of pathos — in the 
School for Scandal is, perhaps, to be 
regretted ; but in this case a deficiency of 



230 SHERIDAN AND THE 

the melting heart is counterbalanced by a 
prodigality of the opulent mind. The 
piece transcends locality and epoch. The 
resident not only of Bath and of London, 
but of New York and San Francisco, the 
denizen not only of great capitals but of 
provincial villages, the inhabitant of yester- 
day, to-day, and to-morrow, can perceive 
the meaning, feel the power, and rejoice in 
the sparkling gayety of the School for 
Scandal. 

This great comedy — produced when its 
author was in his twenty-seventh year — 
was written slowly, painfully, and with 
patient labour. Moore devotes about thirty 
pages of his Life of Sheridan to an exposi- 
tion of the two distinct sketches that the 
dramatist first made, when rearing the 
fabric of the piece, and dilates with particu- 
lar admiration upon the scrupulous study, 
the fastidious care, and the anxious severity 
of revision with which he selected his lan- 
guage, moulded his materials, and blended 
and fused the many scattered threads of 
his fancy and inventive thought into one 
symmetrical fabric of crystal wit. ' ' Noth- 
ing great and durable," exclaims the de- 
lighted biographer (and Moore was a man 
of excellent judgment, great reading, and a 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 23 1 

beautiful faculty in literature), "has ever 
been produced with ease. . . . Labour 
is the parent of all the lasting wonders of 
this world, whether a verse or stone, 
whether poetry or pyramids." The original 
manuscripts of the comedy manifested 
especially to Moore's discerning eye "a 
certain glare and coarseness," showing the 
effect of recent study of Wycherley and 
Vanbrugh ; but also they revealed the 
steady pressure of a delicate taste and the 
incessant operation of strenuous refine- 
ment, alike in the improvement of the 
characters, the conduct of the plot, the 
formation and arrangement of the sentences, 
and the choice of epithets. One of Sheri- 
dan's peculiarities, indeed, was a light, 
graceful, indolent manner of elegant leisure. 
He preferred that people should suppose 
that his work was always done spontane- 
ously and with careless ease. In reality he 
accomplished nothing without effort. Dur- 
ing a considerable part of his life — cer- 
tainly till he was thirty-six, when he 
joined Edmund Burke's sentimental crusade 
against Warren Hastings and fortified the 
rancorous rhetoric of that statesman by a 
refulgent burst of verbal fireworks concern- 
ing the Begum Princesses of Oude — his 



232 SHERIDAN AND THE 

industry was minute, assiduous, and vigilant. 
No man was ever a more pertinacious worker, 
and no man ever seemed to have less occu- 
pation or less need of endeavour for the 
accomplishment of splendid things. He 
did not, as so many fussy people do — who 
cannot endure to be employed without an 
everlasting fluster of cackle over the virtue of 
their toil — intrude his labour upon the atten- 
tion of his friends. He displayed the finished 
statue ; he did not vaunt the chips and the 
dust that were made in the cutting of it. 
He gave results ; he did not proclaim the 
process of their production. "Few per- 
sons with so much natural brilliancy of 
talents," says Moore, "ever employed 
more art and circumspection in their dis- 
play." But Sheridan's reticence in this 
particular was not exclusively of a theatri- 
cal kind. He held the most of human 
achievements to be (as certainly they are) 
of slight importance ; he shrunk with all 
his soul from the disgrace and humiliation 
of being a bore ; and he possessed in extraor- 
dinary fulness, and therefore he abun- 
dantly exerted, the rare faculty of taste. 
There can be no doubt that, as time wore 
on, the character of Sheridan was weakened 
and degraded by misfortune, embarrass- 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 233 

ment, profligate associations (with the 
Prince Regent and his shameless set), and 
most of all by intemperance ; but at the 
beginning of his life, and for some years of 
his splendid productiveness and prosperity, 
he was a noble gentleman and a most 
individual mental power ; and there is no ■ 
reason why a virtue of his character should 
be set down to its weakness. 

The School for Scandal was produced 
under auspicious circumstances. Garrick 
had read it and pronounced it excellent. 
Garrick, moreover, had assisted at its 
rehearsals, and had written a prologue to 
introduce it. Arthur Murphy, in his life of 
that gi'eat actor — then retired from the 
stage — says that Garrick was never known 
on any former occasion to be more anxious 
for a favourite piece. On the first night, 
May 8, 1777, the doors of Drury Lane 
theatre, which were opened at half-past 
five, had not been opened an hour when the 
house was crowded. The receipts that 
night were £225. King spoke the prologue, 
which is in Garrick' s more whimsical and 
sprightly manner. Colman furnished an 
epilogue. The rehearsals had been numer- 
ous and careful. Sheridan, who was man- 
ager as well as author, had taken great 



234 SHERIDAN AND THE 

pains. Every part was well acted. The 
incessant play of wit created an effect of 
sparkling animation. Mrs. Abington, King, 
and Smitli — who played respectively Lady 
Teazle, Sir Peter Teazle, and Charles Sur- 
face — were uncommonly brilliant. Palmer, 
as Joseph Surface, was superb. The only 
defect noticed was a sluggishness of move- 
ment in act second, incident to some excess 
of talk by the clique -of scandal-mongers. 
Garrick observed that the characters upon 
the stage at the falling of the screen waited 
too long before they spoke. At the close 
of the screen scene, nevertheless, ending 
the fourth act, the applause was tremen- 
dous. Prederick Reynolds, the dramatist, 
happening to pass through the pit passage, 
"from Vinegar yard to Brydges street," 
about nine o'clock that night, heard such a 
noise, all at once, that he thought the thea- 
tre was about to fall, and ran for his life. 
The public enthusiasm, after the final 
descent of the baize, was prodigious. Sheri- 
dan was so delighted that he quaffed un- 
limited wine, got drunk, made a row in the 
street, and was knocked down and put into 
the watch-house. The London newspapers 
teemed with praises of the comedy, not 
only on the next day but on many days 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 235 

thereafter. Horace Walpole, who speedily 
went to see it, wrote thus from his retreat 
at Strawberry Hill : "To my great surprise 
there were more parts performed admirably 
in this comedy than I almost ever saw in 
any play. Mrs. Abington was equal to the 
first in her profession. Yates, Parsons, 
Miss Pope, and Palmer, all shone." Boaden, 
the biographer, in allusion to King and 
Mrs. Abington as Sir Peter and Lady 
Teazle, said they were so suited to each 
other that they lost half their soul in sepa- 
ration. For years afterward the success of 
the School for Scandal was so great in 
London that it clouded the fortune of the 
new pieces that were brought forward in its 
wake. Prom the capital it went to Bath, 
Edinburgh, York, Dublin, and other large 
towns of the kingdom. Moore records that 
the scenes of the auction and the screen 
were presented upon the Paris stage in 
1778, in a piece called Les Deux Neveux, 
and that the whole story soon found its 
way to the Theatre Frangais, under the 
name of Tartuffe de Moeur's. Genest, com- 
menting on the first cast, and speaking from 
his ample knowledge of the chronicles of 
the first performance (if not, possibly, 
from personal recollection), observes that 



236 SHERIDAN AND THE 

"this comedy was so admirably acted that 
though it has continued on tlie acting list 
at Drury Lane from that time to this (1832), 
and been several times represented at 
Covent Garden and the Haymarket, yet no 
new performer has ever appeared in any 
one of the principal characters that was not 
inferior to the person who acted it origi- 
nally." The statement is made in Tlie 
Thespian Dictionarij (1802), that "the 
copy of this play was lost after the first 
night's representation, and all the per- 
formers in it were summoned together early 
the next day in order, by the assistance of 
their parts, to prepare another prompter's 
book." 

The London productions of the School 
for Scandal recorded by Genest 1 are these : 

Drury Lane May 8, 1777. 

Haymarket September 2, 1785. 

Drury Lane April 8, 1797. 

Drury Lane May 18, 1798. 

Covent Garden March 31, 1798. 

Covent Garden May 30. 1810. 

Covent Garden .March 23, 1813. 

Covent Garden. ...... September 10, 1818. 

Drury Lane December 1, 1825. 

1 Some Account of the English Stage, from the 
Restoration iu 1660 to 1830. In Ten Volumes. (By 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 237 

It is more than half a century since the 
industrious, loquacious, sensible, matter-of- 
fact parson of Bath made up his chronicle, 
and many brilliant representations of the 
School for Scandal have been accomplished 
within that time on both sides of the At- 
lantic. The method in which the piece 
was originally acted, however, has been 
preserved by tradition, and actors in suc- 
ceeding generations have seldom widely de- 
parted from it — although they may have 
fallen short of its reputed perfection (a 
point by no means certain). That method 
was the delicate, brilliant exaggeration of 
the manners of polite society in the days of 
George III. Mrs. Abington (1738-1815), 
the original representative of Lady Teazle, 
made her, radically and consistently, the 
affected fine lady, without giving the slight- 
est indication that she had ever been "a 
girl bred wholly in the country ' ' ; and Mrs. 
Abington' s example has usually, and per- 
haps involuntarily, been followed. Eliza- 
beth Farren (1759-1820), who succeeded 
Mrs. Abington at Drury Lane, gave a re- 
markably elegant performance of the part, 

the Rev. John Genest, of Bath.) Bath : Printed by 
H. E. Carrington. Sold by Thomas Rodd, Great 
iSi'ewport street, London, 1832. 



238 SHERIDAN AND THE 

harmonious as to artifice with the ideal in- 
dicated by her predecessor, but superior to 
tliat ideal in natural refinement. It was in 
this character that Miss Farren took leave 
of the stage, April 8, 1797, just before her 
marriage with the Earl of Derby.i The 
next important embodiment of Lady Teazle 
was that of Dora Jordan (1762-1816). That 
delightful actress, while assuming the af- 
fected fine lady, allowed an occasional trace 
of rustic breeding to show itself through an 
artificial manner. John Gait, who wrote 
biographies of both Miss Farren and Mrs. 
Jordan, but had never seen either of them, 
states that Dora Jordan's impersonation of 
Lady Teazle was praised for ' ' those little 
points and sparkles of rusticity which are 
still, by the philosophical critics, supposed 
to mark the country education of the fas- 
cinating heroine." And Gait's parallel be- 
tween the two is instructively significant. 
Miss Farren was ' ' as the camellia of the 
conservatory — soft, beautiful, and deli- 

1 " I recollect the circumstance of seeing Lord 
Derby leaving his private box to creep to her (Miss 
Farren) behind the screen, and, of course, we all 
looked with impatience for the discovery, hoping 
the screen would fall a little too soon and show to 
the audience Lord Derby as well as Lady Teazle." 
— Miss Wynne's Diary of a Lady of Quality. 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 239 

cate." Mrs. Jordan was "as the rose of 
the garden, sprmkled with dew." All the 
representatives of Lady Teazle, for a hun- 
dred years, have been one or the other of 
the varieties thus denoted. 

Historic chronicles record many distin- 
guished names of actors upon the British 
stage who have been identified with the 
School for Scandal and who have sharpened 
the outline and deepened the colour of those 
traditions as to its performance which it 
was a part of their vocation to transmit. 
King, who left the stage in 1802, had earlier 
parted from Sheridan. His immediate suc- 
cessors as Sir Peter Teazle were Richard 
Wroughton and the elder Mathews (1776- 
1835), but neither of them was conspicu- 
ously fine in it. Mathews played Sir Peter 
at twenty-eight. Munden (1758-1832) 
acted it, with Mrs. Abington as Lady 
Teazle, on March 31, 1789, in London. 
Before that time he had acted it in Dublin 
with Miss O'Neill as Lady Teazle ; and he 
opened the season of 1816-17 with it, at 
the new Drury Lane (the old one was 
burned down on February 24, 1809). Dur- 
ing his farewell engagement, October 1 to 
October 31, 1823, at Drury Lane, he played 
it twice — on the 18th and on the 25th. 



240 SHERIDAN AND THE 

His performance of Sir Peter was always 
admired for polished deportment, freedom 
from suspicion, and boundless confidence. 
" When an actor retires," said Charles 
Lamb, "how many worthy persons must 
perish with him ! With Munden — Sir 
Peter Teazle must experience a shock ; Sir 
Robert Bramble gives up the ghost ; Crack 
ceases to breathe." The discrimination 
here suggested is significant : Sir Peter was 
in the second grade — not the first — of 
that great actor's achievements. It was in 
the first grade, however, of the achievements 
of his eminent successor, William Farren i 
(1786-1861), the best Lord Ogleby of this 
century, on the British stage, who, while 

1 On the occasion when William Farren made his 
first appearance upon the London stage, playing Sir 
Peter Teazle, the School for Scandal, was inter- 
preted by a remarkable group of actors. This 
performance occurred at Covent Garden (Harris, 
manager) , on September 10, 1818 ; and this is a part 
of the cast : 

Sir Peter Teazle Mr. Farren. 

Sir Oliver Surface Mr. Terry. 

Joseph Surface Mr. Young. 

Charles Surface C. Kemble. 

Crabtree Mr. Blanchard. 

Sir Benjamin Backbite Mr. Liston. 

Lady Teazle Louisa Brunton. 

Maria Miss Foote. 

Mrs. Candour Mrs. Gibbs. 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 24I 

he lacked robust vigour for the nnpersona- 
tion of Sir Anthony Absolute and kindred 
characters, possessed exactly the lace-ruffle- 
and-diamond style essential for the ex- 
pression of Sir Peter Teazle's refinement, 
high-bred testiness, and amused, satirical 
cynicism. No English actor since Farren 
has been esteemed his equal in this char- 
acter. The most notable performance of 
Sir Peter that the English audience has 
seen since Earren's day was, apparently, 
that of Samuel Phelps (1797-1872). It is 
thought to have lacked Farren' s distinction 
and his delicacy of mechanism and finish, 
but it was accounted remarkable for the 
qualities of force, sincerity, authority, and 
restraint. William Farren, son of "old 
Farren," performed Sir Peter Teazle, in a 
revival of the School for Scandal which 
was effected at the Vaudeville theatre, Lon- 
don, in 1872, and gained public favour and 
critical admiration. 

The character of Lady Teazle has had 
many representatives on the British stage, 
only a few of whom are now remembered. 
Louisa Brunton, who became Countess of 
Craven, and Miss Smithson (1800-1854), 
who wedded with Berlioz, the composer, 
were among the earliest followers in the 
Q 



242 SHERIDAN AND THE 

footsteps of Mrs. Abington, Miss Farren, 
and Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Warner (1804- 
1854), acted the part with Phelps, and was 
esteemed one of its best representatives. 
Lucy Elizabeth Vestris (1798-1856) gave an 
impersonation of Lady Teazle, which, al- 
though superficial and shallow, was ex- 
ceedingly vivacious and piquant. Louisa 
Cranstoun Nisbett (1812-1858), who be- 
came Lady Boothby — the most radiant 
and enchanting of the old stage beauties — 
made the part bewitching and brilliant, 
without suggestion of much sincerity or 
depth. One of the most highly esteemed 
and thoughtfully commended portrayals of 
Lady Teazle that have been recorded of 
late years was that given by Marie Wilton 
(Mrs. Bancroft) at the Prince of Wales 
theatre, London, in April 1874. That intel- 
lectual and polished actress Genevieve Ward 
has acted it, with sparkling effect, both in 
Prench and English. 

The American record of the School for 
Scandal begins with a performance of it 
given at the John street theatre, New York, 
on December 16, 1785. The famous piece 
was then acted — according to the excellent 
authority of Ireland — ' ' probably for the 
first time in America." The first represen- 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 243 

tation that the comedy received at the old 
Park theatre occurred on December 3, 1798. 
Since then it has been performed in every 
considerable theatre in the United States, 
and often it has enlisted the talent of re- 
markably brilliant groups of actors. There 
is probably no veteran play -goer who could ' 
not, with slight effort of the memory, recall 
a cast of the School for Scandal which he 
would regard as incomparable and memo- 
rable. No piece has enjoyed more favour as 
the signalising feature of special dramatic oc- 
casions. 1 The chief part — the part that is a 

1 The comedy was acted, with this excellent cast, 
for the benefit of John Brougham, at Niblo's the- 
atre, May 19, 1869, p.m. : 

Sir Peter Teazle John Gilbert.! 

Sir Oliver Surface John Brougham. | 

Joseph Surface Neil Warner. 

Charles Surface Edwin Adams. f 

Crabtree A. W. Young.f 

Sir Benjamin Backbite Owen Marlowe. t 

Rowley T.J. Hind.f 

Moses Harry Beckett.f 

Trip J. C. Williamson. 

Snake Frank Rae.f 

Careless J. W . Collier. 

Sir Harry Bumper R. Green. 

Lady Teazle Mrs. D. P. Bowers. 

Maria Miss Pauline Markham. 

Lady Sneerwell Mrs. John Sefton.f 

Mrs. Candour Miss Fanny Morant.f 

t Dead. 



244 SHERIDAN AND THE 

spring of crystal vitality for the whole fab- 
ric of the piece — is Lady Teazle, and upon 
the representative of that character the 
comedy is largely dependent. On the Amer- 
ican stage Lady Teazle has been acted by 
Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Hallam, 
Mrs. Lipman, Miss Westray (Mrs. W. B. 
Wood), Mrs. Shaw, Mrs. Gilfert, Eanny 
Kemble (September 21, 1832), Mrs. Hamb- 
lin, Miss Cooper, Rose Telbin, Sarah Ander- 
ton, Mrs. Eussell (now Mrs. Hoey), Mme. 
Ponisi, Mrs. Mowatt, Catharine Sinclair 
(Mrs. Edwin Forrest), Ellen Tree (Mrs. 
Charles Kean), Julia Dean, Eliza Logan, 
Mrs. Catherine Earren, Jean Davenport 
(Mrs. Lander), Mrs. Bowers, Laura Keene, 
Miss Jane Coombs, Miss Madeline Hen- 
riques, Miss Rose Eytinge, Miss Eanny 
Davenport, Mrs. Julia Bennett Barrow, 
Mrs. Scott-Siddons, Miss Adelaide Neilson, 
Miss Rose Coghlan, Miss Augusta Dargon, 
Miss Annie Clarke, Mrs. E. B. Conway, 
Miss Ada Dyas, Mrs. Clara Jennings, Miss 
Ada Cavendisii, Mrs. Rose Leland, Mrs, 
Langtry, and Miss Ada Rehan. 

Among distinguished representatives of 
Sir Peter Teazle who have been seen on the 
American stage may be named Mr. Henry, 
Mr. Hallam, Mr. W. B. Wood, Joseph Jef- 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 245 

ferson, the grandfather of our Rip Van 
Winkle, William Warren (the father of 
the late William Warren, of our time, who 
also was famous and especially fine in this 
character), Mr, Twaits, Mr. Roberts, Mr. 
Blanchard, Mr. Finn, Mr. Chippendale, 
Henry Placide, Peter Richings, Henry 
Wallack, Charles Bass, William Rufus 
Blake, William Davidge, John Gilbert, 
Charles Fisher, Mark Smith, and Henry 
Edwards. The character of Charles Sur- 
face has been interpreted, for American 
audiences, by Mr. Hodgkinson, Mr. Cooper, 
George Barrett, Charles Kemble, Frederick 
B. Conway, James E. Murdoch, William 
Wheatley, George Vandenhoff, E. L. Daven- 
port, Lester Wallack, Charles Wyndham, 
H. J. Montague, Osmund Tearle, Charles 
Coghlan, Charles Barron, George Clarke, 
and John Drew. 

Most of the old comedies contain impro- 
prieties ; sometimes of situation, more 
commonly of language ; and those are not 
adornments but blemishes. Every old 
comedy, furthermore, which has survived 
in actual representation, has gathered to 
itself, in the course of years, a considerable 
number of extraneous passages, which may 
collectively, though perhaps not quite accu- 



246 SHERIDAN AND THE 

rately, be described as "gags." Those are 
the contributions, mainly, of actors and 
stage-managers. Tliey are either figments 
of fancy, or readily appreciable jokes, or 
local and particular allusions, which, in 
actual performance of the piece, were found 
to be effective. In some cases they have 
become so solidly incorporated into the 
original text that they have gained accept- 
ance as actually parts of the original struct- 
ure, and the omission of them has been 
known to prompt a righteous remonstrance 
against the iniquity of tampering with the 
author. As a rule they are both spoken 
and heard under the impression that they 
belong to the play. The "pickled ele- 
phant" that figures in Valentine's mad 
scene, in Love for Love., might be cited as 
an example of this sort of embellishment. 
The passage is not in Congreve's text, but 
it is generally used. It was introduced by 
the elder Wallack — then a young man on 
the London stage — on a night when he was 
acting Valentine, in place of Elliston, who 
was disabled with gout. That day an ele- 
phant had gone mad and been shot by the 
guards, and this incident had caused much 
popular excitement. Valentine, who is 
pretending to be deranged, has to talk 



SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 247 

wildly, and Wallack's sudden ejaculation, 
' ' Bring me a pickled elephant, ' ' was thought 
to be excellent lunacy — for it was received 
with copious applause ; and Elliston, seated 
in his invalid-chair, at the wing, accosted 
Wallack, as that actor came off, and mourn- 
fully exclaimed, "They never shot an ele- 
phant for me, young man!" Since then 
every representative of Valentine makes 
this allusion, although now the reference is 
pointless and the image stands in the cate- 
gory of Oriana's "tall, gigantic sights " and 
Tilburina's "whistling moon." The pres- 
ence of such points in those old plays may 
well intimate to the judicious observer that 
their text has not, from the beginning, been 
regarded as a sacred thing, and that the 
prime necessity of the stage — which is 
effect — may sometimes be found to war- 
rant both additions and omissions in the 
presentment of works that are, in some 
measure, obsolete. One thing is certain — 
that the indelicacy of those old pieces is 
offensive to the taste of the present time, 
and ought not ever, in these days, to be 
thrust upon an audience. It is not an 
answer to talk of " Bowdlerism," or to 
sneer at "purists," or to stigmatise re- 
finement as squeamish folly. There is 



248 SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. 

much pure gold in the old English comedy; 
but the dirt that is in it should be cast 
aside. Nor is the modern theatre under 
any sort of obligation to treat that body of 
stage literature as if it were a celestial reve- 
lation. The book of the School for Scan- 
' dal prepared by Augustin Daly (who first 
produced the comedy at his theatre on 
September 12, 1874, and revived it on 
January 20, 1891, with Ada Eehan as 
Lady Teazle), has been edited in a spirit 
harmonious with these views. The coarse- 
ness of the scandal-mongering colloquies 
has been expunged. A few sentences have 
been dropped, in order to shorten the 
piece, and a few others have been trans- 
posed — the objects sought being incessant 
movement and the circumscription of each 
act within a single scenic picture. That 
comedy is not only the best work of one of 
the most brilliant writers that ever lived, 
but it is one of the best dramatic pieces 
ever written, and the revival of it from 
time to time will, doubtless, continue to 
occur upon the stage as long as the stage 
endures. This certainly should be hoped, 
for the School for Scandal teaches charity 
and reticence ; and these are among the 
best virtues that adorn character and sanc- 
tify life. 



FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 249 



XVII. 

FAEQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 

T^HE plays that survive from the past are 
-L the plays that are not, in their spirit, 
their character, their essential vitality, 
restricted to the particular fashion of the 
periods in which they w^ere written. Jon- 
son and Shakespeare lived and wrote side 
by side ; but while Jonson's plays are 
no longer acted those of Shakespeare still 
keep the stage. The Alchymist would not 
be accepted now, except, perhaps, for a 
night or two, by an audience of scholars 
and as a curiosity. That comedy contains, 
indeed, in the character of old Mammon, 
the dramatic ancestor of Sir Sampson 
Legend and Sir Anthony Absolute, and 
some of the speeches in it are wonderfully 
vigorous, ornate, and eloquent. Its object, 
however, was satire of a local and contem- 
poraneous mania— the practice of astrology 
and the quest for the wonderful philoso- 
pher's stone that would transmute worth- 



250 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 

less metals into gold — and with the 
disappearance of that mania disappeared 
also the vitality of the satire upon it. As 
You Like It, on the other hand, and Much 
Ado About Nothing, because they are 
comedies dealing faithfully and powerfully 
with the elemental facts of human nature, 
are as much alive to-day, and as significant 
and welcome upon the stage as they were 
when first presented in Shakespeare's time. 
The dramatic author who portrays repre- 
sentative types of humanity rather than the 
ephemeral eccentricities of the hour in 
which he lives is recognised by mankind, in 
all periods, as being the bearer of a signifi- 
cant and interesting message. Farquhar, 
to some extent, dealt with the permanent 
and abiding facts of human nature, and that 
is one reason why he survives as a dramatist 
and pleases the public of to-day. The 
auxiliary reasons are his abundant flow of 
animal spirits, his droll humour, his nimble 
invention, his skill in raillery, and his grace- 
ful art in making sprightly language the 
spontaneous expression of gallant, mirthful, 
amorous, adventurous character — women 
who fascinate by every dazzling and melt- 
ing charm of coquetry, and men who turn 
all life to a feast of roses and revel in its 
fragrance. 



FARQUHAR AND THE IISrCONSTANT. 25 I 

George Farquliar was born in 1678, at 
Londonderry, Ireland, and was educated 
at that place and at Trinity College, Dublin. 
He was the son of a clergyman and he 
proved to be a wild youth. He was entered 
at Trinity, as "a sizar," on July 17, 1694, 
and he left it in 1695. In college he was 
considered a dull fellow, and one account 
of him says that he was expelled for an 
irreverent jest, relative to one of the mira- 
cles recited in the New Testament ; while 
another relates that he left the university 
on account of the death of his patron. Dr. 
Wiseman, Bishop of Dromore. On leaving 
college he joined the Dublin theatre, then 
managed by Ashbury, and made his first 
appearance as an actor, choosing the part of 
Othello. That was in 1695. He remained 
on the stage only one season. His memory 
was strong, his delivery fluent, his de- 
meanour elegant, his person good ; but his 
voice was feeble and he could never quite 
control a nervous tendency to stage fright. 
The immediate cause of his retirement from 
the stage, however, was an accident. He 
had the misfortune to inflict a dangerous 
wound upon a stage antagonist, when acting 
in Dryden's play of The Indian Emperor, 
and the thought that he had come near 



252 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 

killing a fellow-creature so impressed his 
mind that he resolved to quit forever the 
profession of an actor. Such is the story ; 
but this sensitive disposition did not pre- 
vent him from becoming, subsequently, a 
soldier. He left Dublin, for London, in 
1696, in the society of that brilliant actor 
Robert Wilks, and on reaching the capital 
of the British kingdom he speedily made a 
pleasant impression in society, and pres- 
ently was fortunate enough to win the 
favour of the Earl of Orrery, who made him 
a lieutenant in his own regiment and sent 
him, on service, into Ireland and elsewhere, 
so that for several years he led a military 
life ; and it is recorded that he was invaria- 
bly upright in his conduct and noted for his 
courage. 

Wilks, who early discerned Farquhar's 
talent and perceived the drift of his mind, 
urged him to write for the stage, and in 
1698 was brought out his first comedy — - 
made in compliance with the wish of that 
good friend — Love and a Bottle. He after- 
ward wrote The Constant Couple., or a 
Trip to the Jubilee ; Sir Harry Wildair ; 
The Inconstant, or the Way to Win Him ; 
The Twin Bivals ; The Stage Coach ; The 
Recruiting Officer ; and The Beaux' Strata- 



FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 253 

gem. In The Constant Couple the character 
of Sir Harry Wildair first occurs — a part 
in which Wilks was conspicuously brilliant 
and which came to be intimately associated 
with the shining name of Peg Wofi&ngton. 
Wilks acted in every one of his plays and 
Anne Oldfield in two of them. The Twin 
Rivals was long regarded as Farquhar's 
most artistic composition, but it has not 
survived in equal repute with The Incon- 
stant or The Becruiting Offl,cei% or even 
The Beaux' Stratagem ; for the first two of 
those pieces are still acted, and the last, on 
account of the dashing character of Archer, 
long kept its place upon the stage, even in 
the theatre of America. The Beamiting 
Officer, it will be remembered, contains the 
sprightly part of Captain Plume and is a 
comedy of piquant reminiscence of Par- 
quhar's own experience and observation 
while on duty in the romantic old city of 
Shrewsbury. It was the habit of this 
author to sketch himself in his wild, gallant 
characters, and he has aptly indicated his 
ideal of the bright original, in a string of 
expressive adjectives descriptive of Young 
Mirabel, whom he indicates, in the preface 
to The Inconstant, as "a gay, splendid, 
generous, easy, fine young gentleman." 



254 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 

Farquhar had a short life but a merry one, 
notwithstanding that his temperament was 
melancholy and his final experience unfor- 
tunate. It was he who discovered and first 
recognised the talent of Anne Oldfield, 
whom he found in the Mitre Tavern, in St. 
James's Market ; and it was under his 
influence and that of Sir John Vanbrugh 
that this brilliant girl was introduced upon 
the stage, in 1699, by Rich, at the King's 
theatre. Anne was only sixteen and Far- 
quhar only twenty-one at that time, and 
for a while they were lovers ; but in 1703 
the gentleman got married, and four years 
later, in April 1707, he died — aged twenty- 
nine. The marriage was a mercenary one, 
on his part, and he appears to have been 
properly rewarded by finding that his wife 
had no fortune whatever. It is recorded, 
though, that he took the disappointment 
in a philosophical spirit and treated his 
connubial partner with all possible chivalry. 
Toward the last he sold his military com- 
mission, in order to pay his debts, and 
presently sunk into despondency and death. 
His final effort was The Beaux' Stratagem. 
His mental brilliancy and sportive humour 
remained active and salient to the last. 
When he was dead Wilks found amone; his 



FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 255 

papers a forlorn little note which sadly and 
simply said : "Dear Bob, I have not any- 
thing to leave thee to perpetuate my mem- 
ory "but two helpless girls : Look upon 
them sometimes and think of him that was, 
to the last moment of his life, thine, George 
Earquhar." 

The story of this brief and bright life 
seems a fit prelude to the sparkling play of 
The Inco7istant, in which it is easy to per- 
ceive the author's ideal of himself, together 
with the essential characteristics of his 
mind and temperament. That piece, like all 
his works, has to be cut and altered a lit- 
tle, in order that it may be represented, 
for he did not scruple sometimes to write 
in a licentious vein and to use expressions 
which in these days would offend the audi- 
ence. It is surprising, however, to consider 
how well that comedy bears being freed 
from the taint of sensual warmth, which 
was the characteristic of the plays of Far- 
quhar's period, and how much excellent 
substance remains. Mirabel is the type of 
many young fellows who may be met with 
in society everywhere. He rejoices in his 
youth and strength, in gallantry and adven- 
ture, and he will keep his freedom. He 
loves Oriana, but having been contracted 



256 FARQUHAR AXD THE INCONSTANT. 

to her lie shrinks from matrimony. The 
course of events is too methodical. Con- 
ventionality makes it insipid, and therefore 
he breaks away and is inconstant. Such a 
temperament inclines to value not what it 
can have but what is denied to it ; yet 
presently it can be awakened by XJeril and 
touched by devotion and made to realise 
that life and love are very serious matters. 
Oriana, devotedly fond of him, but likewise 
skilful in coquetry, employs various wiles 
in order to subdue this errant cavalier, and 
the movement of the piece is the rapid and 
continually shifting encounter of their wits, 
in those stratagems of love. The flow of 
intrigue, the variety of incident, the sparkle 
of language, the undercurrent of passion, 
the reality, sincerity, and piquancy of char- 
acter, the occasional touches of sentiment, 
the flexibility of action, and the absorbing 
interest of the climax — at which a feeling 
of almost agonised suspense is sustained 
with superb skill — are living virtues in a 
play ; and they make this one as significant 
and valuable and enjoyable to the world 
now as it was in the romantic days of good 
Queen Anne. The closing scene of it, 
which has always been much admired, is 
said to have been partly based upon an in- 



FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 25'/ 

cident in the experience of the author. Tlie 
entire piece is founded on The Wild Goose 
Chase, written by Jolm Fletcher and pro- 
duced in 162 1 . "I took the hint, ' ' says Far- 
quhar, in his preface, " from Fletclier's Wild 
Goose Chase^ and to those who say that I 
have spoiled the original I wish no other in- 
jury but that they would say it again." 
Something more than a hint was, in fact, 
taken from the elder dramatist ; yet The 
Inconstant contains much that is original, 
and especially it lives and glows with the 
characteristic spirit of impulsive, impetuous 
sprightliness and wanton mirth which was 
essentially Farquhar's nature. When first 
produced this comedy was encumbered with 
a miserable prologue of thirty-four lines, 
written by P. A. Motteux and crammed full 
of similes drawn from the cook's kitchen. 
Also it was furnished with an epilogue by 
the poet laureate, Nicholas Rowe, announc- 
ing the moral of the piece to be that 

" With easy freedom and a gay address 
A pressing lover seldom wants success, 
Whilst the respectful, like the Greeks, sits 

down, 
And wastes a ten years' siege before one 

town." 

The Inconstant made its advent upon the 

R 



258 FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 

American stage 011 January 1, 1759, at the 
old theatre on Cruger's Wharf, New York. 
In June 1795 a three-act version of it, made 
by the reigning favourite Hodgkinson, was 
produced at tlie tlieatre in Jolm street, with 
Plodgkinson as young Mirabel. In 1829 
this old comedy was given at the Park 
theatre, and Mirabel was acted by George 
Barrett. In 1832, at the same theatre, the 
piece was represented with a distinguished 
cast of the characters, including Charles 
Kemble as young Mirabel, Henry Placide 
as old Mirabel, Mr. Simpson as Duretete, 
Mrs. Sharp as Oriana, and Fanny Kemble 
as Bisarre. Murdock first acted young 
Mirabel in New York in 1857 at Burton's 
theatre. Neither of the Wal lacks appears 
to have played Mirabel, although Lester 
Wallack played Duretete. Among the rep- 
resentatives of Mirabel, in old times, were 
Gifford, 1744 ; Palmer, 1751 ; Smith, 1753; 
Wrougton, 1779 ; Farren, 1780 ; Pope, 1787; 
C. Kemble, 1811; and Rae, 1817. Those 
performances occurred at Drury Lane or 
Covent Garden, in London. Garrick, at 
Goodman's Fields, played Duretete, and 
this performance he repeated, for Kitty 
Olive's benefit, at Drury Lane, in 1761. 
The younger Bannister took Duretete in 



FARQUHAR AND THE INCONSTANT. 259 

1798. Oriana lias been acted, among 
others, by Peg Woffington, the pretty Mrs. 
Davies, wife of Dr. Johnson's friend the 
actor and bookseller, Mrs. Lessingham, 
and Sally Booth. Kitty Clive played Bisarre, 
and so did Mrs. Abington. 

Augustin Daly, who revived the comedy 
on November 7, 1872, with Clara Morris as 
Oriana, and again on January 8, 1889, with 
Ada Rehan in that character, pruned the 
text of The Inconstant^ discarded the scene 
of the monkish masquerade, restored the 
passage portraying Duretete's rage and 
comic pugnacity at the end of act third, and 
compressed the piece into four acts ; and at 
the latest of these revivals, a few lines by 
the present writer were added, by way of 
epilogue, spoken by Oriana — who ends the 
play.i The custom of naming this piece 

1 Not yet! for what if Oriana choose 
The crown of all your rapture to refuse? 
Through many a maze of frolic, yet of pain, 
Her faithful heart has felt your gay disdain. 
Shall she not triumph, — now the strife is o'er — 
And punish him who vexed her so before? 
No ! Take her hand : her heart has long been yours. 
True love in trouble all the more endures! 
She'll cling the closer for the risk she braved, 
And cherish all the more the life she saved. 
There's nought a loving woman will not do 
When once she feels her lover's heart is true. 



26o FARQUHAR AiSD THE INCONSTANT. 

Wine Works Wo7iders (in allusion to the 
incident of the red Burgxindy marked one 
thousand, in the last scene) originated 
many years ago, but that title was unknown 
to the time of Farquhar. Mirabel has been 
played by many dashing light comedians of 
the last hundred years and more, but upon 
the American stage the part is inseparably 
entwined with the name and fame of that 
glittering comedian of other days, James E. 
Murdoch. The serious side of Mirabel's 
nature was made earnest and sweet by him, 
and by establishing a conviction of his in- 
herent manliness and generosity he intensi- 
fied enjoyment of his superficial insincer- 
ity and his manifold pranks. Clara Mor- 
ris, playing Oriana, presented a delicious 
type of womanhood, rich, variable, capri- 
cious, and by the simulation of beauty in 
piteous wreck, by sweet tenderness of voice, 
and by rapid alternations of tender and 
lightsome mood she made a deep impres- 
sion. The Inconstant is one of those fan- 
ciful pieces that are entitled to be viewed 
through a haze of unreality, which makes 
ideal pictures grateful to the mind and 
which allows an innocent forgetfulness of 
the moralities. 



LONGFELLOW. 261 



XVIII. 

LONGFELLOW. 1 

THE death of Longfellow comes home to 
hundreds of hearts with a sense of 
personal loss and bereavement. The lova- 
ble quality in his writings, which was the 
natural and spontaneous reflex of the gen- 
tleness of his nature, had endeared him 
not less as a man than as a poet. To read 
him was to know him, and, as Halleck 
said of Drake, to know him was to love 
him ; so that his readers were his affection- 
ate friends. The reading of Longfellow is 
like sitting by the fireside of a sympathetic 
and cherished companion. The atmosphere 
of his works has the refinement and elegance 
of a sumptuous, well-ordered library ; but 
also it has the soft tranquillity and smiling 
contentment of a happy home. 
To any one who ever was privileged to 

1 The poet Longfellow died on March 24, 1882. 
This paper was first published at that time. 



262 LONGFELLOW. 

sit by the fireside of the poet, the thought 
of his death is almost inconceivable, and 
it brings an overwhelming solemnity. No 
man ever diffused a more radiant influence 
of life, cheerfulness, and vigorous hope 
than Longfellow did, beneath his own 
roof. He was not, indeed, a demonstrative 
person ; he did not overflow with effusion 
or cover by a boisterous heartiness the ab- 
sence of a sincere welcome. But he never 
failed to do the right thing in the right way, 
or to say the right word at the right time. 
He was thoughtful for every one who ap- 
proached him. He knew by unerring intui- 
tion the ways of true grace — which flow 
out of true kindness. He was entirely frank 
and simple, bearing himself always with 
gentle dignity and speaking always with a 
sweetness that was inexpressibly winning. 
With youth in particular he had a profound 
and comprehensive sympathy. He under- 
stood all its ardours and aspirations, its 
perplexity in presence of the mysteries of 
life, its embarrassment amid unfamiliar 
surroundings, its craving for recognition, 
its sensitive heart, and its dream-like spirit. 
" The thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts." To the last day of his life he 
carried that mood of youth ; and no one 



LONGFELLOW. 263 

ever heard from his lips a word of satire or 
discouragement. His first and greatest im- 
pulse was sympathy. In domestic life this 
displayed itself in a constant, unobtrusive 
solicitude for the comfort of those around 
him, and in a thousand courtesies that 
equally adorned his conduct and comforted 
his associates. In his writings it is the 
lambent flame of every page. 

Yet there was no element of insipidity in 
his character. If he preferred always to 
see the most agreeable side and to speak 
always the most agreeable word it was not 
that he was blind to defects, or assiduous 
to please, or insincere, or acquisitive of 
popularity. When occasion required it 
he spoke his convictions, whether accept- 
able or otherwise, fully and firmly, and he 
could rebuke injustice or ill-breeding with a 
cool censure that was all the more implac- 
able for its calmness and reserve. He 
never obtruded his scholarship, but if the 
drift of conversation carried him that way 
he tinted his discourse witli many a shining 
ray of knowledge and many a coloured flash 
of anecdote, with citations from a wide 
range of books, and with a peculiar, dry, 
half-veiled drollery that was kindly, mis- 
chievous, and delightfully pungent. His 



264 LONGFELLOW. 

tolerance was neither a weakness nor an 
artifice ; it was the outgrowth of constitu- 
tional charity and tenderness toward that 
human nature of which he possessed so 
much and which he knew so well. 

Those who remember him in early years 
say that he was remarkable for personal 
beauty and for the order and refinement of 
his life and manners. From the first he 
seems to have possessed the composure of 
high poetic genius. Those who think that 
he was passionless and that he knew little 
or nothing of tragedy must have read to 
but little purpose such poems as The Goblet 
of Life, The Light of Stars, or the closing 
chapters of Hyperion. Even his familiar 
ballad of Tfie Bridge is eloquent of a pro- 
found knowledge of grief ; and it may be 
doubted whether our language contains a 
more absolute poetic note of anguish and 
fortitude — when one considers its bleak 
isolation and its mournful significance — 
than his lines called Weariness. He was 
not a Byron. His poetry is not the poetry 
of storm and stress. The " banner, torn 
but flying," that "streams like a thunder- 
storm against the wind," is nowhere un- 
furled in all his writings. But if he did not 
utter the conflict he clearly and sweetly 



LONGFELLOW. 265 

tittered the consciousness of it and tlie 
grand clarion note of patience and conquest. 
Of the trials and cares that are common to 
humanity and that can be named and known 
he had his share ; but also he had the ex- 
perience which the poetic nature invariably 
and inevitably draws upon itself. He had 
felt all that Burns felt, in writing To Mary 
in Heaven. He had felt all that Goethe 
felt, in writing that wonderful passage of 
Faust which ends with the curse on pa- 
tience as the worst of human afflictions. 
But he would suffer no shock of sorrow to 
turn his life into a delirium. He would 
meet every trouble as a man ought to meet 
it who believes in the immortal destiny of 
the human soul. When he lost, under cir- 
cumstances so pathetic and tragical (1861), 
the wife whom he so entirely loved (that 
beautiful and stately lady, whom to remem- 
ber is to wonder that so much loveliness 
and worth could take a mortal shape), he 
took the terrible anguish into the silent 
chambers of his heart, he bore it with un- 
flinching, uncomplaining fortitude ; and 
from that day onward no reader of his 
writings was visited with one repining mur- 
mur, one plea for sympathy, one wail of 
personal loneliness or despondency or mis- 



266 LONGFELLOW. 

anthropical bitterness. All that was ever 
shown of that misery was the simple gran- 
deur of endurance combined with even a 
more wistful and readier and deeper sym- 
pathy with the sorrows of mankind. 

There are poets, and good ones too, who 
seem never to get beyond the necessity of 
utterance for their own sake. Longfellow 
was not an egotist. He thought of others ; 
and the permanent value of his writings 
consists in this — that he helped to utter the 
emotions of the universal human heart. It 
is when a writer speaks for us what were 
else unspoken — setting our minds free and 
giving us strength to meet the cares of life 
and the hour of death — that he first be- 
comes of real value. Longfellow has done 
this for thousands of human beings, and 
done it in that language of perfect simplic- 
ity — never bald, never insipid, never fail- 
ing to exalt the subject — which is at once 
the most beautiful and the most difficult of 
all the elements of literature. And the 
high thoughts and tender feelings that he 
has thus spoken, the limpid, soft, and tran- 
quil strain of his music — breathing out so 
truly our home loves, our tender longing for 
those that are dead and gone, the trust that 
we all would cherish in a happy future be- 



LONGFELLOW. 267 

yond the grave, the purpose to work nobly 
and endure bravely while we live — will 
sound on in the ears of the world, long- 
after every hand and heart that honours 
him or grieves for him now is mouldering in 
the dust. 

The least of us who have recollections of 
Longfellow may venture to add them to 
the general stock of knowledge, without 
incurring the reproach of intrusiveness. 
I saw him often, long before I was hon- 
oured with his personal acquaintance ; and 
I observed him closely — as a youth nat- 
urally observes the object of his honest 
admiration. His dignity and grace and 
the beautiful refinement of his counte- 
nance, together with his perfect taste in 
dress and the exquisite simplicity of his 
manners, made him the ideal of what a poet 
should be. His voice was soft, sweet, and 
musical, and, like his face, it had the innate 
charm of tranquillity. His eyes were blue- 
gray, very bright and brave, changeable 
under the influence of emotion (as, after- 
ward, I often saw), but mostly calm, atten 
tive, and gentle. The habitual expression 
of his face was not that of sadness ; yet it 
was pensive. Perhaps it may be best de- 
scribed as that of serious and tender 



268 LONGFELLOW. 

thouglitfulness. He had conquered his own 
sorrows, thus far, but the sorrows of others 
threw their shadow over him — as he 
sweetly and humanly says in his pathetic 
ballad of The Bridge. 

It was in April 1854 that I became per- 
sonally acquainted with Longfellow, and he 
was the first literary friend I ever had- 
greeting me as a young aspirant in litera- 
ture and holding out to me the hand of fel- 
lowship and encouragement. He allowed 
me to dedicate to him a volume of my 
verses, published in that year, being the 
first of my ventures. They were juvenile, 
crude verses ; yet he was tolerant of them, 
because he knew that sincerity of heart and 
ambition of spirit lay beneath them, and, 
in his far-reaching charity and prescience, 
he must have thought that something good 
might come of even such a poor beginning. 
At all events, where others were cold, or 
satirical, or contemptuous, he was kind, 
cordial, and full of cheer. A few words in 
commendation of the book had been writ- 
ten by N. P. Willis and the paragraph hap- 
pened to come in his way. He was pleased 
with it, and I can hear now the earnest tone 
in which he spoke of it, turning to Mrs. 
Longfellow, who was present, and saying, 



LONGFELLOW. 269 

with an obvious relish of good- will : ' ' There 
is much kindness in Willis's nature." 
This was a slight trait, hut it is of little 
traits that the greatest human character is 
composed. Goodness, generosity, and a 
large liberality of judgment were, in his 
character, conspicuous elements. His spon- 
taneous desire — the natural instinct of his 
great heart and philosophic mind — was 
to be helpful : to lift up the lowly ; to 
strengthen the weak ; to develop the best 
in every person ; to dry every tear and 
make every pathway smooth. It is saying 
but little to say that he never spoke a harsh 
word except against injustice and wrong. 
He was the natural friend and earnest ad- 
vocate of every good cause and right idea. 
His words about the absent were always 
considerate and he never lost a practical 
opportunity of doing good. 

For the infirmities of humanity he was 
charity itself and he shrank from harshness 
as from a positive sin. " It is the preroga- 
tive of the poet," he once said to me, in 
those old days, " to give pleasure ; but it is 
the critic's province to give pain." He 
had, indeed, but a slender esteem for the 
critic's province. Yet his tolerant nature 
found excuses for even as virulent and hos- 



270 LONGFELLOW. 

tile a critic as his assailant and traducer 
Edgar Poe — of whom I have heard him 
speak with genuine pity. His words were 
few and unobtrusive and they clearly in- 
dicated his consciousness that Poe had 
abused and maligned him ; but instead of 
resentment for injury they displayed only 
sorrow for an unfortunate, distempered 
adversary. There was a volume of Poe's 
poems, an English edition, on the library 
table, and at sight of this I was prompted 
to ask Longfellow if Poe had ever person- 
ally met him — "because," I said, "if he 
had known you it is impossible he could 
have written about you in such a manner." 
He answered that he had never seen Poe, 
and that the bitterness was, doubtless, due 
to a deplorable literary jealousy. Then, 
after a pause of musing, he added, very 
gravely : ' ' My works seemed to give him 
much trouble, first and last ; but Mr. Poe 
is dead and gone and I am alive and still 
writing — and that is the end of the matter. 
I never condescended to answer Mr. Poe's 
attacks ; and I would advise you now, at 
the outset of your literary life, never to 
take notice of any attacks that may be 
made upon you. Let them all pass." He 
then took up the volume of Poe, and, turn- 



LONGFELLOW. I'Jl 

ing the leaves, particularly commended the 
stanzas entitled For Annie and The 
Haunted Palace. Then, still speaking of 
criticism, he mentioned the great number 
of newsxDaper and magazine articles, about 
his own writings, that were received by 
him — sent, apparently, by their writers. 
"I look at the first few lines," he said, 
"and if I find that the article has been 
written in a pleasant spirit, I read it 
through ; but if I find that the intention is 
to wound, I drop the paper into my fire, 
and so dismiss it. In that way one escapes 
much annoyance." 

Longfellow liked to talk of young poets, 
and he had an equally humorous and kind 
way of noticing the foibles of the literary 
character. Standing in the porch, one sum- 
mer day, and observing the elms in front of 
his house, he recalled a visit made to him, 
long before, by one of the many bards, now 
extinct, who are embalmed in Griswold. 
Then suddenly assuming a burly, martial 
air, he seemed to reproduce the exact figure 
and manner of the youthful enthusiast — 
who had tossed back his long hair, gazed 
approvingly on the elms, and in a deep 
voice exclaimed, " I see, Mr. Longfellow, 
that you have many trees — I love trees ! ! " 



272 LONGFELLOW. 

"It was," said the poet, " as if he gave a 
certificate to all the neighbouring vegeta- 
tion." A few words like these, said in 
Longfellow's peculiar, dry, humorous man- 
ner, with a twinkle of the eye and a droll 
inflection of the voice, had a charm of 
mirth that was delightful. It was that 
same demure playfulness which led him 
to write of the lady who wore flowers 
" on the congregation side of her bonnet," 
or to extol those broad, magnificent west- 
ern roads which ' ' dwindle to a squirrel- 
track and run up a tree." He had ^no 
particle of the acidity of biting wit ; but he 
had abundant, playful humour, that was 
full of kindness and that toyed good- 
naturedly with the trifles of life. That 
such a sense of fun should be amused by 
the ludicrous peculiarities of a juvenile bard 
was inevitable. 

I recall many talks with him, about 
poetry, the avenues of literary labour, and 
the discipline of the mind in youth. His 
counsel was conveyed in two words — calm- 
ness and patience. He did not believe in 
seeking experience or in going to meet bur- 
dens. " What you desire will come, if you 
will but wait for it " — that he said to me 
again and again. ' ' My ambition once was," 



LONGFELLOW. 273 

he remarked, "to edit a magazine. Since 
then the opportunity has been offered to 
me many times — and I did not take it, and 
would not." That same night he spoke of 
his first poem — tlie first that ever was 
printed — and described his trepidation 
when going, in the evening, to drop the 
precious manuscript into the editor's box. 
This was at a newspaper office in Portland, 
Maine, when he was a boy. Publication 
day arrived and the paper appeared — but 
not a word of the poem. " But I had an- 
other copy," he said, "and I immediately 
sent it to the rival paper, and it was pub- 
lished." And then he described his exul- 
tation and inexpressible joy and pride, 
when, — having bought a copy of the paper, 
still damp from the press, and walked with 
it into a by-street of the town, — he saw, 
for the first time, a poem of his own act- 
ually in print! "I have never since had 
such a thrill of delight," he said, " over 
any of my publications." 

His sense of humour found especial 
pleasure in the inappropriate words that 
were sometimes said to him by persons 
whose design it was to be complimentary, 
and he would relate, with a keen relish of 
their pleasantry, anecdotes, to illustrate 

8 



274 LONGFELLOW. 

this form of social blunder. Years ago he 
told me, at Cambridge, about a strange gen- 
tleman who was led up to him and intro- 
duced, at Newport, and who straightway- 
said, with enthusiastic fervour, — "Mr. 
Longfellow, I have long desired the honour 
of knowing you ! Sir, I am one of the few 
men who have read your Evangeline.'''' 
Another of his favourites was related to me 
a day or two after it occurred. The writer's 
rule was to reserve the morning for work, 
and visitors were not received before noon. 
One morning a man forced his way past 
the servant who had opened the hall- door, 
and, going into the presence of the as- 
tonished author, in his library, addressed 
him in the following remarkable words : 
"Mr. Longfellow, you're a poet, I believe, 
and I've called here to see if I couldn't git 
you to write some poetry, for me to have 
printed, and stuck onto my medicine bot- 
tles. You see, I go round sellin' this medi- 
cine, and if you give me the poetry I'll give 
you a bottle of the carminative — and it's 
one dollar a bottle." For the enjoyment 
of that story it was needful to see the 
poet's face and hear the bland tone of his 
voice. Many years ago he told me that 
incident — sitting by the wide fire-place in 



LONGFELLOW. 2/5 

the library back of his study. As I write 
his words now tlie wind seems again to be 
moaning in the chimney and the fire-light 
flickers upon his pale, handsome, happy 
face, and already silvered hair. He took 
delight in any bit of fun like that. He was 
always gracious, always kind, always wish- 
ful to make every one happy that came 
near him. 

About poetry he talked with the earnest- 
ness of a genuine passion and yet with 
no particle of self-assertion. Tennyson's 
Princess was a new book when first I 
heard him speak of it, and I remember 
Mrs. Longfellow sitting with that volume in 
her hands and reading it by the evening 
lamp. The delicate loveliness of the lyrical 
pieces that are interspersed throughout its 
text was, in particular, dwelt upon as a 
supreme merit. Among his own poems his 
favourite at that time was Evangeline ; but 
he said that the style of versification which 
pleased him best was that of The Bay is 
Done ; nor do I wonder, reading this now, 
together with The Bridge^ Twilight^ The 
Childreii's Hour, and The Open Window^ 
and finding them so exquisite both in pathos 
and music. He said also that he sometimes 
wrote poems that were for himself alone, 



276 LONGFELLOW. 

that he should not care to publish, be- 
cause they were too delicate for publica- 
tion. One of his sayings was that ' ' the 
desire of the young poet is not for ap- 
plause but for recognition," He much 
commended the example, in one respect, 
of the Italian poet Alfieri, who caused 
himself to be bound into his library chair 
and left for a certain period of time, each 
day, at his library table — his servants 
being strictly enjoined not to release him 
till that time had passed : by this means he 
forced himself to labour. No man ever 
believed more firmly than Longfellow did 
in regular, proportioned, resolute, incessant 
industry. His poem of The Builders con- 
tains his creed ; his poem of The Ladder of 
St. Augustine is the philosophy of his career. 
Yet I have many times heard him say ' ' the 
mind cannot be controlled ' ' ; and the fact 
that he was, when at his best, a poet of in- 
spiration is proved by such poems as Sandal- 
phon, My Lost Youth, The Beleaguered 
City, The Fire of Drift Wood, Suspiria, 
The Secret of the Sea, The Two Angels, 
and The Warden of the Cinque Ports. 

The two writers of whom he oftenest 
spoke, within my hearing, were Lowell 
and Hawthorne. Of Lowell he said, "He 



LONGFELLOW. 2/7 

is one of the manliest and noblest men 
that ever lived." " Hawthorne often came 
into this room," he said, "and sometimes 
he would go there, behind the window cur- 
tains, and remain in silent reverie the whole 
evening. No one disturbed him ; he came 
and went as he liked. He was a mysteri- 
ous man." Witli Irving' s works he was 
especially familiar, and he often quoted 
from them in his talk to me. One summer 
day at his cottage at Nahant I found him 
reading Cooper's sea stories, and had the 
pleasure of hearing from his lips a tribute 
to that great writer — the foremost novelist 
in American literature, unmatched since 
Scott in the power to treat with a free 
inspiration and vigorous and splendid de- 
scriptive skill the vast pageants of nature 
and to build and sustain ideals of human 
character worthy of such surroundings. 
Longfellow was in fine spirits that day, and 
very happy, and I have always thought of 
him as he looked then, holding his daughter 
Edith in his arms — a little child, with 
long, golden hair, and lovely, merry face — 
and by his presence making the sunshine 
brighter and the place more sacred with 
kindness and peace. 
The best portrait of Longfellow is the one 



278 LONGFELLOW. 

made by Samuel Lawrence ; the best be- 
cause it gives tlie noble and spirited poise 
and action of his head, shows his clear-cut, 
strong, yet delicate features unmasked with 
a beard, and preserves that alert, inspired 
expression which came into his face when 
he was affected by strong emotion. I recall 
Mrs, Longfellow's commendation of it, in a 
fireside talk. It was her favourite portrait 
of him. We discussed Thomas Buchanan 
Read's portrait of him, and of his three 
daughters, when those pictures were yet 
fresh from the easel. I remember speaking 
to him of a fancied resemblance between 
the face of Mrs. Longfellow and the face of 
Evangeline, in Faed's well-known picture. 
He said that others had noticed it but that 
he did not perceive it. Yet I think those 
faces were kindred, in stateliness and in the 
mournful beauty of the eyes. It is strange 
what trifles crowd upon the memory, when 
one thinks of the long ago and the friends 
that have departed. I recollect his smile 
when he said that he always called to mind 
the number of the house in Beacon street, 
Boston, — which was Mrs. Longfellow's 
home when she was Miss Appleton, — "by 
thinking of the Thirty-nine Articles." I 
recollect the gentle gravity of his voice when 



LONGFELLOW. 2/9 

he showed me a piece of the coffin of Dante, 
and said, in a low tone, " That has touched 
his bones." I recollect the benignant look 
in his eyes and the warm pressure of his 
hand when he bade me good-bye (it was the 
last time) , saying, ' ' You never forget me — 
you always come to see me." There were 
long lapses of time during which I never 
saw him, being held fast by incessant duties 
and drifted far away from the moorings of 
my youth. But as often as I came back to 
his door his love met me on the threshold 
and his noble serenity gave me comfort and 
cheer. It seems but a little while since, in 
quick and delicate remembrance of the old 
days, he led me to his hearthstone, saying, 
"Come and sit in my children's chair," 
What an awful solemnity, and yet what a 
soothing sense of perfect nobleness and 
beneficent love, hallows now that storied 
home from which his earthly and visible 
presence has forever departed ! 

In the summer of 1861, on a day of sun- 
shine and flowers and gently whispering 
winds, those rooms were hushed and dark- 
ened, and a group of mourning friends 
stood around the sacred relics, beautiful in 
death, of the poet's wife. Only one voice 
was heard — the voice of prayer. But 



250 LONGFELLOW. 

every heart prayed for the sufferer, thus 
awfully stricken and left to bear the bur- 
den of a great and endless grief. And then 
we followed her to the place of her final 
rest. Here before me is a twig that I broke, 
that day, from a tree beside her grave. I 
may keep it now in remembrance of him 
as well as of her. He fulfilled, within the 
twenty years following, some of the greatest 
works of his life ; but in all that time he 
was only waiting for the hour which came 
to him at last. Through all the grand 
poise of his being, through his never-end- 
ing still beginning labour, through his pen- 
sive ways neither mournful nor gay, through 
his meek but manly acceptance of the 
events of life, through the high and solemn 
strains of his later poetry, and through 
that wistful, haunted look in his venerable, 
bard-like countenance, this was the one 
prevailing truth. He was waiting for the 
end. The world is lonelier for his absence. 
"Woe is me, that I should gaze upon thy 
place and find it vacant ! ' ' 

" O friend ! O best of friends ! Thy absence 
more 
Than the impending night darkens the land- 
scape o'er! " 



A THOUGHT ON COOPER's NOVELS. 281 



XIX. 

A THOUGHT ON COOPER's NOVELS. 

'TMIE inherent spiritual charms appertain- 
J- ing to different forms of art are not in- 
terchangeable. The best Grecians are agreed 
that something yet remains in Homer that 
translation has never grasped. The char- 
acteristic magic of a romance will not im- 
part its thrill to a drama. Those who, for 
example, should expect in a play, a re- 
production of the soul of Cooper's genius 
would inevitably be disappointed. Certain 
dramatic elements his genius and his stories 
do, indeed, possess ; but the essential qual- 
ity of them is an evanescent spirit of romance 
that can no more be cramped within stage- 
grooves than the notes of a wind-harp can be 
prisoned in a bird-cage. Often, when Cooper 
is imaginative, his mind revels over vast 
spaces, alike in the trackless wilderness 
and on the trackless ocean — forests that 
darken half a continent and tremendous 
icebergs that crash and crumble upon un- 



282 A THOUGHT OX COOPER's NOVELS. 

known seas. More often he is descriptive 
and meditative, moralising, like Words- 
worth, on rock and river and the tokens of 
a divine soul in the wonders of creation. 
His highest mood of feeling is that of calm- 
eyed philosophy. His highest ideal of vir- 
tue is self-sacrifice. His best pictures are 
too broad in scope and too voluminous in 
details for illustration to the eye. ISTeither 
Jasper's white- winged descent upon the 
Indian ambuscade, nor the flight of Hutter's 
ark, nor Chingachgook singing his death- 
song, nor the mysterious Pilot steering his 
ship, in night and tempest, through a per- 
ilous channel and a thousand dangers 
of death, could be shown in effigy. His 
highest figures, moreover, are types of the 
action that passes within the heart ; of pas- 
sion that is repressed ; of what is suffered 
rather than of what is done. He never 
painted better than when he painted the 
Pathfinder vanishing on the dusky edge of 
the forest, after the parting with Mabel ; 
and in that lovely, pathetic incident, as in 
many that are kindred with it, there is no 
particle of dramatic effect. Salient features 
are alone available for the purpose of the 
drama, and it is not in salient features that 
the spell of Cooper's genius resides. The 



A THOUGHT ON COOPER's NOVELS. 283 

essence of his novels — the wildwood fra- 
grance of fancy and the reiterated yet con- 
stantly varied mood of suspense — eludes 
dramatic treatment. The reader is con- 
stantly aware of this charm ; never so much 
aware of it, perhaps, as in that absorbing 
chapter of the Mohicans which describes 
the beginning of Munro's quest of his 
daughters, after the massacre. The spec- 
tator of a play on the subject would not be 
aware of it at all. He might be interested, 
indeed, and at times excited and impressed ; 
but he would no longer be ruled by the mas- 
sive sincerity of Cooper's feeling and the 
honest, minute thoroughness of his simple 
text, and he would be no longer swayed by 
his own imagination. In the silence of the 
library the reader may listen with Hawkeye 
for the rustle of a leaf, or the crackling of 
a twig, or the lonesome call of the loon across 
the darkening lake at sunset. In the glare 
of lamps, and when neither the situation 
nor the language is ideal, the spectator 
would perceive his vision limited by the 
picture before him; the inward ear would 
close and the inward eye would darken. It 
is the nature of some books that they lure 
us into a dream of pleasure and keep us 
there ; and it is the nature of some pictures 



284 A THOUGHT ON COOPER'S NOVELS. 

that they confront fancy with fact and stop 
our dreaming witli a shock. Notliing in 
Cooper's delineation of wilderness life 
seems incongruous or absurd to a reader. 
His books have an atmosphere — like the 
odour of pine trees on the wind of night — 
and this the stage could not preserve. They 
were not written for it and they cannot be 
fitted to its powers and its needs. They 
will yield romantic pictures, effective inci- 
dents, and various and picturesque charac- 
ters ; but they will not yield their glamour. 
The poet who brought home the sea-shells 
found that they had left their beauty on the 
beach. 



JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 285 



XX. 

A MAN or LETTERS : JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 
OMit April 18, 1888. 

4 PATIENT and noble struggle against 
-^A. inexorable disease has ended, and a 
friend and comrade — dearer than words 
can say — has fallen asleep. The duty of 
recording his death falls naturally upon one 
who for many years stood nearest his side 
and was honoured with his affection and 
conlidence. It would, under any circum- 
stances, be a difficult, mournful duty. It 
is inexpressibly solemn to the friend who 
writes these words — for not alone is it fit- 
ting that love should utter its sense of be- 
reavement, but that thought should express 
its conviction of public no less than personal 
loss. 

John Hassard was a journalist, but also 
he was a man of letters, and in both capaci- 
ties he exerted eminent talents in a consci- 
entious spirit and with passionate loyalty 
to the highest standard of principle, learn- 



286 A MAN OF LETTERS : 

ing, and taste. As a journalist he knew 
that the most essential function of the news- 
paper is the presentation of the news ; but 
as a man of letters he was aware that the 
pictorial facts and the facts of thought and 
feeling are not less actual or less Important 
than the superficial aspects of the passing 
hour. He treated many subjects, ranging 
over a period of many years during which 
he was in continuous service of the press 
and writing in the different veins of narra- 
tive, description, criticism, satire, and des- 
ultory comment ; but whatever the subject 
he never failed to satisfy his readers that 
every material fact had been stated and to 
impress their minds with his absolute sin- 
cerity, his breadth of view, his wisdom, his 
moral principle, his fine taste, and his noble 
ideal of social order and personal conduct. 
It was that double power, that power of 
presenting the picture of actual life and at 
the same time of indicating its motive, its 
spirit, its accessories and its meaning, that 
made him an exceptional force in the pro- 
fession that he dignified and adorned. 

A life that is devoted to the art of writ- 
ing seems, on its surface, to be uneventful. 
There is nothing in it of outward action 
and but little of visible deed. Yet no 



JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 287 

greater error could possibly be made, in 
the study and estimate of human character, 
than the error of assuming that the life of 
a true man of letters is necessarily or pos- 
sibly a life of apathetic monotony and gray 
stagnation. For such a man lives, not alone 
under the pressure of his intense individu- 
ality, but under the stress and strain of the 
intellectual movement of his time. Every 
fresh wave of thought breaks over him. 
Every aspiration and every forward step of 
the vanguard mind of his period is to him a 
personal experience — because he must keep 
pace with it. The religious question, the 
political question, the social question, the 
scientific question — each and every one of 
these is of vital personal importance to the 
man of letters. He cannot be content, as 
so many other people are, merely to hear 
of those things and to pass them by ; he 
must think out the problems of the age ; he 
must reach a conclusion ; he must have 
convictions ; he must speak his mind. To 
him is forbidden alike indifference and 
silence. A moral and mental responsibility 
rests on him, to serve his generation, to 
proclaim the truth and defend the right, to 
help others at the hard part of the way, and 
thus to fulfil the duty for which he was de- 



256 A MAN OF LETTERS : 

signed in the drama of human development. 
There are serious ordeals in the life of such 
a man — times of sore mental conflict and 
cruel trial, hours of acute suffering, moments 
of splendid conquest and joy. Outwardly 
he seems placid, and the round of his ex- 
istence looks dull. But under the calm 
surface of that silver tranquillity the tem- 
pests of passion rage and pass, the powers 
of character are matured and marshalled, 
and the strife of ideas accomplishes its ap- 
pointed work. The representative man of 
letters is not seen in public affairs, and there 
is but little to tell of him when his career 
has ended. But his words are in thousands 
of hearts and his influence lives in a myriad 
of the good deeds of the men of action who 
have imperceptibly felt his dominion. 

John Hassard's life afforded constant and 
potent illustration of those views. It was 
only slightly diversified by events, but it 
flowed over the depths of a wide, varied, 
and significant intellectual experience. He 
was born in New York, in 1836. He was 
taught and trained in St. John's College at 
Eordham, from which institution he was 
graduated in 1855. He assisted in prepar- 
ing the New American JEncyclopcedia and 
in 1865 was editor of The Catholic World. 



JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 289 

In 1865-66 he was a writer for The Chi- 
cago Itepuhlican. He became associated 
witli The New York Tribune in 1866, and 
in various capacities he served that journal 
for about twenty years. He was an edito- 
rial writer, a reviewer, and a musical critic, 
and for some time after the death of Horace 
Greeley, in 1872, he held the post of manag- 
ing editor. He wrote the Life of Arch- 
bishop Hughes (1866) ; the Life of Pope 
Pius IX. (1877) ; a History of the United 
States (1877) ; The Bing of the Nibelungs 

— a Description of its First Performance, 
in August., 1876, at Bayreuth (1877) ; and 
A Pickwickian Pilgrimage (1881). He was 
at Bayreuth in 1876, and his narrative of 
Wagner's exploits and success at that time 

— a remarkable epoch in the history of 
music — is one of fascinating interest, and 
it is as vital now as when it was written. 
The sagacity with which he recognised 
Wagner's power and the precision and 
authority with which he foreshadowed the 
drift of that composer's ideas and influence 
abide among many proofs of his pre-eminent 
competence and superiority as a musical 
judge. His Pickwickian Pilgrimage was 
the result of a stroll in England, in the 
summer of 1879, chiefly in the track of Pick- 

T 



290 A MAN OF LETTERS : 

wick and his friends. He was an ardent 
admirer of tlie works of Cliarles Dickens, 
and he followed in the footsteps of that 
novelist reverently and with affectionate 
appreciation. That book contahis an ac- 
count of a boat voyage down the Wye, 
from Hereford to Chepstow, which is per- 
haps the best single example of his best 
literary manner that could be chosen — -a 
manner in which the influence of Goldsmith 
and Addison is discernible through the 
writer's characteristic mood of keen obser- 
vation, light, pictorial touch, and gentle 
sentiment. Another of his felicitous works 
is a pamphlet called The Fast Printing 
3Iachine (1878), being a narrative of me- 
chanical dexterity and industrial achieve- 
ment, but invested with the charm of a 
fairy tale and expressed in language of rare 
vigour. These few sentences recount the. 
chief incidents of his life — scarcely more^ 
eventful than that of the Vicar of Wake-' 
field, with its migration from the brown 
bed to the blue and from the blue bed back 
again to the brown. It is the old story of' 
the man of thought, who stands apart from 
the pageant of human affairs, moralising 
on it as it passes, and striving to purify 
and refresh it at the springs. 



JOHN R. G HASSARD, 29 1 

The actual and essential story of that 
life lies deeper and would be found beneath 
the surface, in the current of intellectual 
development and the analysis of literary 
achievement. John Hassard was not one 
of the exceptional few who build monu- 
ments essentially great in literature and 
thus strongly command and permanently 
retain the attention and interest of the 
world. He was a man of fine talents and 
lovely character, who devoted himself to 
the service of journalism, and who made 
his mark in that field — broad, strong, bril- 
liant, and noble. The great public of mis- 
cellaneous readers cannot rationally be 
supposed to cherish a deep interest in such 
a personality for a great length of time after 
its career has ended. But it was a person- 
ality that blessed many who never heard of 
it, while those whose privilege it was to 
know his labours and their value will ten- 
derly meditate now upon the beautiful traits 
of his mind, the charm of his companion- 
ship, and the lesson of his pure, blameless, 
devoted, beneficent life. He would have 
been the first to reprove extravagant eulogy 
of his talents or his productions. He filled 
a difficult and delicate office with rare abil- 
ity and discretion. He taught, by example, 



292 A MAN OF LETTERS : 

the primal necessity of being perfectly well 
acquainted with the art he discussed. He 
studied constantly, he thought deeply, he 
worked conscientiously and with laborious 
zeal. His freedom from conventionality 
and prejudice was a continual monition of 
refreshing originality of view and justice of 
mood. He looked at every subject with 
present eyes, not with the eyes of the past. 
The word that he spoke was the word of 
to-day, not of yesterday, and he never fell 
into the error of mistaking his personal 
distaste for a defect in the artist or the 
work reviewed. He knew, with Coleridge, 
that the first requisite for a good critic is 
a good heart, and he proved that he knew 
it, every time he took up his pen. His keen 
intuition as to the relative importance of 
persons and themes was constantly mani- 
fested and was still another lesson of prac- 
tical value. For this journalist and man of 
letters, this devotee of art and music — who 
often sat alone for hours playing upon the 
organ the music that he loved, — was also 
a man of the world. He possessed the 
sense of proportion and fitness, an old-time 
courtliness of thinking as well as of man- 
ner, a sense of the right place for trifles, 
and a happy faculty for silence. He was 



JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 293 

not envious and he was not meddlesome. 
He never thought it to be his duty to regu- 
late the musical criticism of the general 
press. If he wanted a good criticism of an 
opera to be printed he endeavoured to write 
it himself, instead of writing querulous 
observations condemnatory of the remarks 
of contemporary journals. It was another 
of his admirable and exemplary qualities 
that he perceived the critical duty of giving 
encouragement. He looked into the future 
of the artist, and he could be wisely len- 
ient. In the fulfilment of his duty he 
thought of himself last, or not at all, while 
his dignity was of the natural kind that is 
always present. Education and experience 
taught him how to use fine faculties for the 
best advantage of others. 

Among the old-fashioned phrases of 
eulogy there is one that long usage has 
rendered conventional ; but it is very ex- 
pressive : He was a gentleman and a 
scholar. It is much to deserve those names. 
John Hassard entirely deserved them, and 
he bore them with the sweet modesty, 
unconscious humility, and native and win- 
ning gentleness of an unselfish nature. He 
was always thoughtful for others ; always 
doing acts of courtesy and kindness. He 



294 A MAN OF LETTERS : 

was ever to be found on the side of chivalry 
toward women, and his active considera- 
tion for young people, especially for work- 
ing boys, and his sweet manner toward 
children much endeared him wherever he 
went. His reading was large and various. 
He was accomplished in the classics ; he 
had comprehensive knowledge of English 
literature ; and he possessed both the 
Prench language and the German. As a 
reviewer he early acquired the excellent 
method, so long pursued and with such 
good result by the late George Ripley — 
the father of the art in America. That 
method was to assume the author's point of 
view ; to let the book declare itself, its con- 
tents, its style, character, and intention ; 
and then to discuss it as a literary artist, an 
observer, a thinker, and from essential 
environments of its subject. He was 
rarely severe and never unkind. He could 
condemn explicitly, but he stated the 
grounds of his judgment, and they were 
invariably logical and sound. He was 
remarkably expert in perceiving the beau- 
ties of art, and he loved to praise ; and, 
as he knew what had been done by others 
and was quick to see the fresh touch and 
understand the subtle suggestion, his praise 



JOHN R. G. HASSARD. 



295 



gave pleasure, rewarded merit, encouraged 
high endeavour, and was valuable. His 
sympathies went with the imagination and 
the affections, in literature, not with the 
morbid passions and not with the "realis- 
tic" movement in any of its phases. He 
rightly abhorred the art represented by M. 
Zola; he justly despised the whole brood 
of Ouida novelists ; and, in common with 
other sane persons, he smiled at the weak- 
ness, which, mistaking the assertion of 
power for power itself, accepts such writ- 
ings as those of the late Walt Whitman for 
poetry. He was sufficiently conservative 
to love the novels of Scott and the poems 
of Crabbe, and he was sufficiently compre- 
hensive, acute, and fair-minded, while 
recognising the passion and splendour of 
Byron, to appreciate and exult in the philo- 
sophic grandeur, the solemn tenderness, 
the beautiful simplicity, and the comforting 
faith of Wordsworth. Those are significant 
indications of the character of his mind, 
the mood in which he lived and laboured, 
and the ideals toward which he strove. 

And so he passed into his rest. He was 
a bright and gentle presence in the life of 
every man and woman to whom he was 
ever known. He lived a good life. He 



296 A MAN OF LETTERS. 

suffered patiently. He met his fate with 
humble resignation and firm composure. 
He helped, in a material degree, to ad- 
vance the standard of musical art and lit- 
erary taste in the republic. He has left 
critical essays which are models of search- 
ing thought, just judgment, cheering sym- 
pathy, and felicitous expression. The 
sketches with which he enriched our liter- 
ature in its lighter branches are of singular 
beauty, graceful in their form and move- 
ment, often illumined with playful humour, 
always vital with the appreciative sincerity 
of critical enthusiasm. His biographical 
writings are discriminative, judicious, and 
truthful, and are couched in a terse and 
lucid style. He was a devout man, rigid in 
his principles and pure in his life ; but he 
was invariably charitable, magnanimous, 
and tender in his judgment of others. No 
human being was ever more quick than he 
to appreciate merit or to forgive frailty and 
palliate defect. He was much beloved ; he 
is deeply mourned ; and he will long be 
remembered. 

THE END. 



THE WORKS OF 

William Winter. 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGlfeAND. i8mo, Cloth, 75 
Cents. 

GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. 

WANDERERS : A Collection of Poems. i8mo, 
Cloth, 75 Cents. 

SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. i8mo, Cloth, 75 
Cents. (/« the Press.) 

OLD SHRINES AND IVY. i8mo. Cloth, 75 Cents. 
{In the Press.) 

THE PRESS AND THE STAGE: An Oration. 

Delivered before the Goethe Society, at the Bruns- 
wick Hotel, New York, January 28, 1889. 8vo, 
Cloth, $1.50. 



" The supreme need of this age in America is a 
practical conviction that progress does not consist in 
material prosperity, but in spiritual advancement. 
Utility has long been exclusively worshipped. The 
welfare of the future lies in the worship of beauty. To 
that worship these pages are devoted, with all that im- 
plies of sympathy with the higher instincts, and faith in 
the divine destiny of the human race." — From the 
Preface to Gray Days a7id Gold. 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

112 Fourth Avenue, NEW YORK, 

(i) 



WORKS BY WILLIAM WINTER. 



Two New Volumes^ 

UNIFORM WITH 

SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND and GRAY 
DAYS AND GOLD. 



Shadows of the Stage 
Old Shrines and Ivy 

{In the Press) . 



" INIr. Winter has long been known as the foremost 
of American dramatic critics, as a writer of very charm- 
ing verse, and as a master in the lighter veins of 
English prose." — Chicago Herald. 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

112 Fourth Avenue, NEW YORK. 

(2) 



SHAKESPEARE'S 

ENGLAND. 

i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. 



"... It was the author's wish, in dwelling thus, 
upon the rural loveliness, and the literary and historical 
associations of that delightful realm, to afford sympa- 
thetic guidance and useful suggestion to other Ameri- 
can travellers who, like himself, might be attracted to 
roam among the shrines of the mother-land. Tempera- 
ment is the explanation of style; and he has written 
thus of England because she has filled his mind with 
beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness; 
and surely some memory of her venerable ruins, her 
ancient shrines, her rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, 
and her flower-spangled meadows will mingle with the 
last thoughts that glimmer through his brain when the 
shadows of the eternal night are falling and the ramble 
of life is done." — From the Preface. 

" He offers something more than guidance to the 
American traveller. He is a convincing and eloquent 
interpreter of the august memories and venerable sanc- 
tities of the old country." — Saturday Review. 

" The book is delightful reading." — Scribner's 
Monthly. 

" Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and com- 
ments on English life and scenery." — Scotsman. 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

112 Fourth Avenue, NEW YORK. 

(3) 



GRAY DAYS 

AND GOLD. 

i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. 



CONTENTS. 

Classic Shrines. 

Haunted Glens and Houses. 
The Haunts of Moore. Old York. 

Beautiful Bath. 

The Lakes and Fells of Wordsworth. 
Shakespeare Relics at Worcester. 

Byron and Hucknall Torkard. 

Historic Nooks and Corners. 
Up and Down the Avon. Shakespeare's Town. 

Rambles in Arden. 

The Stratford Fountain. 
Bosworth Field. 

The Home of Dr. Johnson. 
From London to Edinburgh. 
Into the Highlands. 

Highland Beauties. 

The Heart of Scotland. 
Elegiac Memorials. Sir Walter Scott. 

Scottish Pictures. 

Imperial Ruins. 

The Land of Marmion. 

At Vesper Time. 

This book, which is intended as a companion to 
Shakespeare's England, relates to the gray days of an 
American wanderer in the British Isles, and to the gold 
of thought and fancy that can be found there. 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

112 Fourth Avenue, NEW YORK. 

(4) 



GRAY DAYS 

AND GOLD. 

i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. 



PRESS NOTICES. 

" Mr. Winter's graceful and meditative style in his 
English sketches has recommended his earlier volume 
upon (Shakespeare's) England to many readers, who 
vk'ill not need urging to make the acquaintance of this 
companion book, in which the traveller guides us 
through the quiet and romantic scenery of the mother- 
country with a mingled affection and sentiment of 
which we have had no example since Irving's day." — 
The Natio7t. 

" As friendly and good-humoured a book on English 
scenes as any American has written since Washington 
Irving." — Daily News, Londoti. 

" Much that is bright and best in our literature is 
brought once more to our dulled memories. Indeed, 
we know of but few volumes containing so much of 
observation, kindly comment, philosophy, and artistic 
weight as this unpretentious little book." — Chicago 
Herald. 

" They who have never visited the scenes which Mr. 
Winter so charmingly describes will be eager to do so 
in order to realize his fine descriptions of them, and they 
who have already visited them will be incited by his 
eloquent recital of their attractions to repeat their 
former pleasant experiences." — Public Ledger, 
Ph iladelph ia . 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

112 Fourth Avenue, NEW YORK. 

(S) 



WANDERERS ; 

BEING 

A Collection of the Poems of William Winter. 

i8mo, Cloth, 75 Cents. 



" But it has seemed to the author of these poems — 
which of course are offered as absolutely impersonal 
— that they are the expression of various representative 
moods of human feeling and various representative 
aspects of human experience, and that therefore they 
may possibly possess the inherent right to exist." — 
From the Preface. 

" The verse of Mr. Winter is dedicated mainly to 
love and wine, to flowers and birds and dreams, to the 
hackneyed and never-to-be-exhausted repertory of the 
old singers. His instincts are strongly conservative; his 
confessed aim is to belong to ' that old school of English 
Lyrical Poetry, of which gentleness is the soul, and 
simplicity the garment.' " — Saturday Review. 

" The poems have a singular charm in their graceful 
spontaneity." — Scots Observer. 

"Free from cant and rant— clear cut as a cameo, 
pellucid as a mountain brook. It may be derided as 
trite, borne, unimpassioned; but in its own modest 
sphere it is, to our thinking, extraordinarily successful, 
and satisfies us far more than the pretentious mouthing 
which receives the seal of over-hasty approbation. — 
AthencEum. 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

112 Fourth Avenue, NEW YORK. 

(6) 



